Open Your Eyes
by deanwinchesters
Summary: (human au) When a masked figure attempts to end Clary's life, her mother goes to extreme measures. She hires Jace Wayland to protect her until the threat has diminished, but Clary finds that when danger and desire mixes, the results turn to be more dangerous than the killer. (clace, slight malec, sizzy, and lukejocelyn.)
1. 01

**Summary: **(human au) When a masked figure attempts to end Clary's life, her mother goes to extreme measures. She hires an Jace Wayland to protect her until the threat has diminished, but Clary finds that when danger and desire mixes, the results turn to be more dangerous than the killer.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own "The Mortal Instruments".

;

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When Clary walked into the room, the first thought to cross her mind was how numbing the cold was, completely ignoring the extravagance of the room. A spike of chilled bumps sprang on her bare arms, and she grit her teeth lightly, looking to the people surrounding her to see if they were as cold as she. They seemed fine, so she ignored the icy atmosphere and tried to focus on her surroundings.

The room was extremely wide, but the ceilings were low—they were as low as the ceilings in her house, but the room spanned to be ten times the size of the home she previously shared with her mother. The low roof seemed like it was caved in, but she was fairly sure that the sagging look of the ceilings was simply a trick the light was playing with her eyes.

"Clarissa?" The voice came from someone—a man she didn't know well, half a stranger—to her left, "Are you feeling all right? Your teeth are chattering."

"They are?" The redheaded girl put a hand to her cheek, feeling the vibrations of her teeth chattering against it, "I wasn't aware." She chose not to correct him on her name, not quite caring if the man she knew she would part with soon assumed that she went by Clarissa.

"Do you need a coat?"

"No, thank you. I'm fine." Clary offered him a smile, then walked a few quick paces to catch up to her mother. "Mom."

"Bored already, Clary?" Her mother's eyes landed on one of the paintings in the room, and her eyes lit up with a smile. She walked more closely, most likely to observe the finer details, and Clary followed.

It was some sort of art convention, and though Clary had accompanied her mother to plenty, this one in particular was strange. The room—and temperature—was strange enough to her, but the lack of paintings was surprising to her.

The walls were wide, but the paintings were spaced well, and Clary could count exactly twelve paintings lining the walls. The box of a room could easily hold thirty sixty paintings, possibly more, but she assumed that they were trying to focus on specific works of art rather than a massive amount of colors and textures.

Her green eyes floated over to the painting her mother was fixated on. A simple leaf was illustrated on the canvas, and though it was detailed brilliantly, she could not understand her mom's fascination in the work.

Clary tried to look at it more closely, tilting her head as though to look at it from a different perspective. She didn't find anything out of the ordinary at the angle, and opted for asking her mother, "Mom?"

"Hmm?" There was a lost tone in her mother's voice, and Clary knew that her mother had heard her speak, but hadn't grasped onto the words. She waited for her mother to turn to look at her for a few impatient moments before stepping closer to her mother, rubbing her arms in an attempt to warm herself.

"What are you—what is that?" Though Clary had changed the question at the last moment, the question that arrived prior wasn't her smartest. She could see by pure observation that her mother was infatuated by the leaf, but she had aimed more closely towards asking _why_ her mother was staring at it.

"It's a maple leaf, Clary." Her mother spoke simply, "It's quite detailed, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is," Clary said quietly, stopping herself from adding _'for a leaf'_ to the end of her remark. Her eyes floated around the room, and she decided to play the more interesting game of 'count the people in the room'. She could spot more than eighty, but her objects persisted to move, so the game was harder than she intended.

"Something wrong, Clary?" Jocelyn finally brought her gaze away from the painting to set her eyes on her daughter, eyes skimming the flesh of goosebumps on Clary's arms before settling on her unamused face. "You're awfully quiet—you should smile. We don't attend showings like these every day."

Clary only nodded, and followed her mother to another painting.

Though the freckled girl was nineteen years of age, she often followed her mother simply because she believed her mother needed company. She believed that her mother wished to have someone similar to her by her side, so Clary followed her to the sort of events her mother loved.

Even now, she lived less than twenty minutes away from her mother—though, she was sure the distance would be much shorter if the streets were not so perpetually busy. The traffic-filled streets were a curse of living in New York, but she bore it with a simple grin and pretended to love the excess amount of people as much as all the other residents did.

She could easily imagine a life that was much more simple, but she didn't dare leave her life in New York—she had too many ties to the state. She had her mother, Luke, Simon, and her friends—though she didn't care for them as much as the main three—and was unsure who would have more trouble with her leaving: her or them.

"I thought Luke said he would come," Clary said casually, her thoughts reminding her of the man who posed as a father to her. "Is he running late, or did he decide against coming?"

"I'm not sure, Clary, but you know that Luke hates these events—there isn't enough excitement, and God knows how much activity he needs in his life." Clary caught some fond smile spreading over her mother's face, and Clary grinned in return.

Though Luke posed as a father, Clary never thought of him in that way—he entered her life too recently, and the fifteen years she had lived without a dad ingrained into her mind that she did not, and would not have a father.

She knew little about her biological father, but she knew that she would never call him her dad—the title held meaning, and she didn't care to give meaning to a man who had been absent from the day her mother became pregnant.

Clary knew little about her father, but she knew his name was Valentine. She knew that he loved Jocelyn more than she loved him—he was a jealous man. Clary remembered Jocelyn telling her that Valentine proposed to her the night he discovered she was pregnant, but she rejected the offer. The next day, he was gone without so much as a note, and Jocelyn rarely spoke of him.

Clary disliked her father, but she was curious—she had no pictures of him, and only knew his forename. The small information was not nearly enough to go by, and if she wished to, she would be unable to track him down—how could you track down a man who was a masked mystery?

She didn't know so much as his surname—Clary had obtained the name 'Fray' from her mother, and was happy with the name.

She was perfectly content; there was only a small part of her that was curious as to her father's identity.

She wondered if her true father, unlike Luke, liked to paint.

;

An hour trickled by, and the large room filled with countless bodies, all talking and laughing with easy words and gestures.

Everyone in the room was infatuated with themselves, ignoring everyone else around them. They seemed to be filled with a sense of self-importance—they cared too much about how they looked and who was looking at them, and they cared nothing about everyone else around them.

Nobody noticed the man in black, hidden in the frame of a window, but how could they? He was hidden in the shadows perfectly, and everyone was too focused on themselves to notice the masked man, or the gun he was holding with patient hands.

His lips curled into some look of disgust, some hatred for society, some hatred for the girl he was looking for. She was easy to spot, but he was too hidden to see the flash of her hair, and too distracted by the strangers that he already hated.

He found them to be pretentious, faking interest in the paintings that they truly ignored—he assumed that they were simply faking a desire to look upon the works so that they would look higher in the eyes of society, the eyes that he hated with some coal in his heart.

If anyone could listen to his thoughts, they would think him to be insane, and perhaps he was—who could hate a mass of people with such a fever by simply looking at them?

But it was possible to him, and it wasn't insanity—it was the only thing he truly knew, and the only thing that made sense to him.

He knew hatred like he knew the back of his hand. He had mastered the art of hatred, and perfected the act of revenge over the years he had spent basking in some half-mad weave of twisted thoughts. He had learned how to seek out the darkness in a person and twist it to something worse in his eyes, and he had mastered the art of seeking out goodness and turning it into some form of stupidity.

How could someone truly be happy in a society as fucked up as the one they lived in?

He had heard teenagers speak about how they hated the society they lived in, but the young souls had no clue how to hate someone the way he did—true hatred, in his eyes, was wanting to twist the light away from a person and leave them in a perpetual state of horror, and finding bliss in imagining their torture.

He had dreamed of killing her so many times—in his cold eyes, she was the root of his problems, his torture, his insanity.

He blamed his madness on her, and the idea of it only made him angrier, twisting his every day thoughts into ones of how beautiful it would be when her heart would stop beating.

And then, he saw it: a shock of flaming hair, and a blink of eyes as green as emeralds.

He lifted his gun, and placed his middle finger on the trigger of the gun, zeroing in on his target and smiling.

;

"Mom," Clary said, pushing past a group of laughing women to reach her mother. They treated her with annoyed glares, but their anger faded in a moment, and they returned to sipping the sparkling champagne in their hand. "Mom."

Jocelyn smiled at her daughter, pulling out a simple plastic bottle of water and hydrating herself—she had never cared much for alcohol, and didn't believe she needed the substance to enjoy art, "Are you having fun?"

_I've been looking at the same twelve paintings for three hours, but they only get more and more interesting._ Clary bit back the remark, and opted for smiling at her mother, "I'm about ready to leave, but if you want me to, I can stay a bit longer."

"All right, Clary; we'll be going in about ten minutes. I need to find someone." Her mother's voice was raised so that her daughter could hear her over the rapidly speaking mouths in the room. Clary didn't bother asking who her mother was looking for—she wouldn't know them either way—and settled for following her mother.

It took a while to navigate the crowded room, and finally, they stopped at one of the emptier spots of the room. Clary was glad to stop and breathe—she was glad that the room was no longer chilly. The extensive crowd had heated the room with their own body temperatures, but now the room was clouded with a plume of different scents of perfume. Clary lightly put a hand to her nose, not caring that the action was considered as rude, and wrinkled her nose slightly.

Her mom was speaking, and Clary tried to listen, ". . . now I can't find him for the life of me, and I'm sure he'll call tomorrow. I'm sure he's still here—he's looking for undiscovered artists—and he requested for me to meet him twenty minutes ago, but I can hardly remember what he looks like. Even if I could . . ."

For whatever reason, the redheaded girl had difficulty listening, and she nodded slightly to signify that she was still listening. Though the room was now uncomfortably warm, a shudder seized her, and her chest constricted with some feeling.

It felt as though a block of ice had wedged in her chest and blocked her breathing. Clary winced—she felt winded, but she hadn't exercised in any way to induce the lack of breath. She smiled at her mother, trying to keep her face plain, and let her eyes scan the room.

Her green orbs floated among the crowds, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and she tried to ignore the ice. The feeling was impossible to ignore, so she gave in to instinct, and let her eyes fly upwards to the windows.

One of the windows was open, and through the crack in the window, she saw a shadowed figure holding an instrument of death: a long gun, pointed at who she thought to be her mother—her lack of training with guns made her oblivious to the fact that the gun was aimed at her, not her mother, but she knew that there wasn't any time to assess the situation.

There was a finger poised on the trigger.

"MOM!" Clary shrieked, whipping herself to the side to knock Jocelyn to the floor in the same moment that the trigger was pulled.

A blinding pain dug into her shoulder, and Clary felt herself falling limp as the room emptied in a mass exodus of people, wishing to preserve their lives. As her eyes fluttered closed, she heard a few frantic voices calling the police, reporting a wounded teenager and the location, and she felt her mother trying to hold her up.

Clary's trembling hands went to her shoulder, and her fingers came back wet, covered in thick blood that looked almost black. A stab of pain raced through the teenage girl, and she cried out an unintelligible syllable before her vision went black.

;

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**Notes: **How was that for a first chapter, and what did you think of the POV of the psychopath/killer?

Question of the day:

**Who is your favorite male fictional character?** I like **Tate** from _American Horror Story_, **Tobias/Four** from _Divergent_,** Klaus** from _The Vampire Diaries_, **Magnus** and **Jace** from _The Mortal Instruments_, and **Finnick** from _The Hunger Games_. (wow that's a lot)

**Q**u**e**s**t**i**o**n**s**, **c**o**m**m**e**n**t**s, **o**r **t**h**o**u**g**h**t**s? Leave a **r**e**v**i**e**w** c:**


	2. 02

**Notes: **/awkward fast update

A huge thank you to my reviewers—I expected to get only one or two, and was ecstatic to see the amount I received. You're amazing, and I'm incoherently happy, so thank you so much cc:

**Jace Wayland**, **Simon Lewis**, and **Luke Garroway **(all cannon) are introduced in this chapter.

Thank you to **sharine** (statuscrawler) for beta-ing this chapter and being wife'd to me c:

**Disclaimer:** I do not own "The Mortal Instruments".

;

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The small room at the hospital was crowded, and though Jocelyn knew that her daughter wouldn't like the mass amount of company, she decided against shooing the visitors away—they all cared for her daughter in some way, and they shared a wish to be present when she woke.

It was silent, but a boy with thick brown hair and glasses chose to cut the silence, "How long was she conscious? After she was shot?" It was the first time that someone had stated the obvious fact that the Clary was hit by a bullet since the incident, and the eyes in the room immediately went to Simon in some state of shock.

"She knocked me away," Jocelyn remarked, voice dry. Luke's hand seized hers, and he interlaced their fingers, squeezing gently. "She knocked me away because she thought the hit was on me."

"How do you know it wasn't on you?" Luke asked, his eyebrows knitting together in a frown.

"I was at Clary's right, and she threw herself at me. The gun hit her left shoulder. It was aimed for her chest."

"Then you saved Clary." Jocelyn's eyes showed confusion by Luke's logic, so he continued, "She tossed herself at you to save you. She wouldn't have if she didn't think you were in danger. If she stayed still, she wouldn't be breathing right now."

"She's barely breathing as it is." Simon protested, a light hand gesturing to the monitor of her heart to the left. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, looking to Jocelyn to measure her reaction—she seemed to be the only one who was frantic as he, and it was calming to him. He believed that if someone was erratic as he, his fear would be understandable.

But Jocelyn seemed settled by Luke's words, "She's breathing, Simon. That's all that matters."

"But it isn't enough. What if he—she—whoever _it_ was tries—"

"I'm aware that it isn't enough, Simon." Jocelyn spoke more sharply, the half-hysteric undertone creeping back into her words, "I know it isn't enough." Her voice softened, and she unknowingly squeezed Luke's hand more tightly to balance the nervous energy.

Jocelyn's hands went to her cell phone, dropping Luke's hand quickly, "But there's people out there—people out there who can protect her. People who are trained to protect."

"Jocelyn, what are you saying?" It was Luke's turn to sound confused at his fiancee's vague words, and his eyes went down to her cell phone to see the number she was dialing. He was unsure as to how she had obtained the number of someone who would be able to protect Clary, but didn't argue—he cared for Clary as he would a daughter, and though she didn't see him in the same light, she was his little girl.

"It's—it's a number I found years ago, back when it was only Clary and I. It leads to members of the federal bureau of investigation who have their life devoted to protecting the unfortunate souls who need protection from any threats they find to be endangering their life."

"And you think that Clary needs this? Jocelyn, try and—"

"Hello?" Jocelyn interrupted, ignoring Luke now. She placed a hand to her other ear to block out the surrounding noise, "Is this the correct number for the federal bureau of investigation?"

"It is. Please state your name, residence, and reason of contact."

"Jocelyn Fray, Manhattan New York." Jocelyn glanced back to her sleeping daughter, "Recently, a man tried to shoot my daughter, and I want her under protection." Her words were firm. She sounded much more confident than she felt—her shaking hands were traitors—and she tried to feign some casualty in her words.

"All right, Ms. Fray. You will be redirected to an available agent in a few moments." Jocelyn expected some upbeat elevator music to play, but the phone was silent for several moments.

"Hello?" The voice sounded surprisingly young to Jocelyn—only years older than teenage—but it was deep, and rugged in a way that reminded her of a character in a movie. "This is Agent Wayland. How may I help you?"

Jocelyn frowned at having to repeat the incident, but she knew that with a wounded daughter, it was not the time to complain about saying something twice. "My daughter was shot in the shoulder at an art gathering, but the shooter was aiming to kill her. I believe she is not safe, and I wish to put her under protection."

"How recently was this event?" His voice sounded mechanical, and Jocelyn could assume that he was voicing a repeat of a form he had stated a dozen times.

"An hour ago, and no, I do not believe it is too early to call. I want her under protection as soon as humanly possible." Jocelyn's voice was more firm—she was sure that she was speaking to a man some years younger than her, and a motherly authority came in naturally.

The man at the other end chuckled softly, "Where are you currently, if you're in such a hurry? I'll come as quickly as possible, and let you fill out the paperwork when I arrive."

Jocelyn provided the name of the hospital, and he hung up without another word. Jocelyn twisted his hands, nervous that he would choose to take the call as a joke and ignore her worries, but Luke was quick to assure her.

"He'll arrive, Jocelyn. Like you said, this is his job—and his pay—and they are trained to take this sort of information seriously. Even if this is a false threat, he will arrive, and Clary will be safe. Don't worry." Luke kissed Jocelyn softly on the cheek, trying to bring her out of her thoughts.

"How do we know he can protect Clary?" Jocelyn spoke.

"Isn't it our job to trust him?" Simon brought himself into the conversation, able to deduct that the person would be watching over Clary was a man. "I mean, the FBI is pretty hardcore. I doubt that they would do a half-assed job. Clary will be safe—she won't die."

A silence fell over the room at the words 'Clary' and 'die' blended into a sentence, and the silence stayed for quite a while. Jocelyn and Luke looked to each other for comfort; Simon awkwardly let his gaze shit from the ground to Clary, checking up on her every few moments.

"We can't be sure he's competent." Luke finally said, and Simon was sure that at least ten minutes had dragged on, "What will he do if the shooter returns? Throw himself in front of Clary?"

"If necessary, yes." The eyes in the room lifted to a new voice, landing on a confident man wearing a small smile, "Hello—I'm sure that I haven't met half of you. My name is Jonathan Wayland. I am here to protect your daughter from any harm thrown at her, and I promise to keep Clarissa Fray alive."

;

When Clary's green orbs fluttered open, she was blinded by a flash of light, much too bright for her sensitive eyes. The source of light was unknown to her—her unadjusted eyes were not yet strong enough to face the light, so she opted for keeping her eyes shut and listening to the voices floating around her.

". . . I have no reason to blindly trust you with my best friend's life." The voice came from Simon, and Clary frowned only slightly, trying to pull together why he sounded so distressed.

_Blindly trust someone with my life?_ Clary strained her ears to hear more, deciding to feign sleep and listen to the conversation.

"And I'm assuming that'd you'd do much better—sitting at home and playing 'Dungeons and Pokemon' is great training against an armed shooter." The voice was an unfamiliar one, but alluring all the same. Clary was tempted to open her eyes and see what the man attached to the voice looked like, but curiosity kept her eyes shut.

"It's _Dungeons and Dragons_, and I do not believe I'm more prepared than you. I'm simply saying that I know Clary better than you do, and I don't trust you with her."

"Boys, stop arguing." Jocelyn commanded, and Clary bit back a smile towards her mother calling the stranger such a casual name. The room silenced, and Clary grew bored on eavesdropping—what was the point when there was no conversation to listen in on?

"Hmm," Clary said groggily, glad her eyes were adjusted to the lights when she opened them for a second time and surveyed the room.

_Why am I in a hospital?_

She tried to sat up, but winced due to a heavy pain in her left shoulder. Three of the people of the room rushed towards her, telling her almost simultaneously to remain lying down. The redhead groaned, but went along with the commands.

She remembered slowly that she was shot—a good explanation for the pain—and remembered why she had originally opened her eyes: to look to the man that the voice came from.

Her striking eyes wandered from Simon to Luke, then pushed back to the third man. Her heart seemed to stutter in her chest, proven by the irrationality in the heart monitor in that moment, and she let her eyes wander over him.

The first thing she noticed about the man, and possibly the reason that her heart skipped a beat, was his eyes. They were _gold_, inhumanly so, and framed by dark golden lashes that matched his waved blonde hair. His skin was lightly tanned, and through his vest and covering shirt, she could see the ink of a tattoo crawling up his elegant neck.

He wasn't quite beautiful, but he was ruggedly sexy in a way that made every man Clary had seen before pale in comparison to the golden one standing in front of her. His eyes caught hers; he caught her staring—no, gaping—and she grasped for some excuse, "Who are you?"

The question wasn't the best cover up for her excessive staring, and she brought her eyes up to the ceiling in a natural lying position, waiting for him to speak up.

He snapped his fingers to attract her attention, and she glanced over to see him holding up a golden badge, "Special Agent Jonathan Wayland," He shut the wallet with the badge inside, giving her a grin that made her feel disoriented, "But I'd prefer if you called me Jace."

"Well, _Jace_," She tried out the uncommon name, deciding that she liked it, "Why are you here? Don't you have better things to do, like gun down a criminal, or save the president from assassination?"

"You sound like you watch too many crime dramas," He replied flippantly. "Believe it or not, people don't try to murder the president every day, and I'm not part of the Secret Service."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Your question was too vague. And I'm here on a call from your mother—she believed that the man who tried to shoot you had a target placed on you, and will try to shoot you again. She called on me to protect and watch over you."

"Like hell you will." Clary bit, the comment coming before she could filter it—her mind was too filled with excessive information and unanswered questions.

"Clary," Her mom said sharply, and Clary sighed, "She apologizes, Agent Wayland."

"You don't need to speak for me, Mom." Clary looked to Jace, ignoring his looks with some difficulty, and narrowed her green orbs. "I'll be perfectly fine on my own, and I'm going to have to dismiss you."

"I'm not letting you do that." Jocelyn looked at her daughter with sharp eyes, then gave Jace a softer look, "Ignore Clary, please. She was almost killed, and she's a bit . . . frazzled at the moment."

"I wasn't almost killed—_you_ were. Mom, I saw where that gun was pointed! I'm not the one that needs protecting."

"Clary, if I may," Jace said, his voice something of a drawl, "Your mother explained, and I'm sure of her logic. The gun was aimed at you—you threw yourself to the right to shove your mother away, but the bullet hit your left shoulder. I stopped by the gallery before I arrived here, and I saw the window, and the blood pattern showed me where you were at the time of the shooting. The gun was aimed directly towards your heart, but the shadow of the window distorted the head of the gun, forcing an untrained eye to believe that the bullet was aimed towards Ms. Fray."

"If you're such an expert on me, then tell me why I was shot."

"I'm not claiming to be any sort of expert—though if it was, I would say that I've perfected my strength, charm, stamina, and about every other area, but I don't feel the need to list every area of my perfection." He grinned charmingly, and Clary rolled her eyes. "But I have simple logic, and I am sure that the shooter was aiming for you. Maybe he was trying to hit a random person, maybe he wanted to kill a younger girl, or maybe your hair made you the easiest target," Clary scowled, but he continued. "But he tried to kill you all the same. He had no intention of killing Jocelyn Fray."

"You sure haven't perfected your people skills," Simon spoke up, his glare on the blonde man unwavering. Jace treated him with a cocky grin, running a tanned hand through his hair.

"And why is that, Simon Says?" Jace asked, amusement flickering into his words.

"Because I've known you for ten minutes, and I want to hit you—and I'm fairly sure Clary wants to, too."

"You don't need to speak for me, Simon." Clary said quickly, giving Simon a look that told him to shut up. Clary looked back up at Jace, and tried to smile casually, "And I'll consider letting you watch over me if he tries a second time."

"Clarissa." The name Jocelyn used was one Clary wasn't used to hearing from her, and the redheaded girl frowned, "There will not be a second time because you will be placed under Agent Wayland's protection. And your persistent arguing is not changing my mind."

"Shouldn't I have a say in whether or not a stranger watches me sleep?" Luke chuckled softly, and Jocelyn gave her fiancee a hard look.

"I'm not a sparkling vampire, Clary. I'm not going to watch you sleep, or bathe, or anything else out of the ordinary. If you had any clue as to what an agent's job was, you would know that the only thing I will be doing is residing with you for the time being and accompanying you when you leave the safety of your home." Jace seemed to be trying not to roll his eyes at the redhead, and she continued to glare at him.

"Since I seem to not have any say in the matter," Clary spoke, dragging her words out to emphasize that she wasn't happy with the situation, "I will agree to letting you . . . protect me, and do whatever you need to do to make sure my life isn't threatened."

"Clary, you—" Simon started, but Clary cut her best friend off with a look that told her that she could handle the agent in front of her, watching her with a smirk.

"Thank you." Jocelyn said, her shoulders sagging in some relief, "I'll have Luke and Simon help me carry out your things while you recover."

"'Carry out my things?'" Clary repeated, sitting up fully to stare at her mother. A spike of pain made its way through her shoulder, but she ignored it with only a distressed grunt. "Carry out my things to where? Are you sending off to Florida, or something?"

"Not Florida," Jocelyn spoke in a calming tone, similar to the one she used when Clary was distressed as a child. "Just another residence a few miles away from your home."

"What for?"

This time Jace spoke, but his voice was grim, "In case the shooter knows where you currently live, and is planning on coming back to finish off the job."

;

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**Secondary Notes:** How was the first Clary & Jace interaction?

Question of the day:

**What books are you currently reading? **I'm halfway through _Allegiant_ by Veronica Roth, and I'm currently depressed because my best friend spoiled the ending for me and I don't want [blank] to happen.

leave a review c:


	3. 03

**Notes: **I write too much all at once, so this was prewritten one or two days ago—when I do prewrite, expect quick(ish) updates.

The characters (cannon) **Magnus Bane** and **Alec Lightwood** are introduced in this chapter. There won't be too many original characters in this fic, so don't worry about having to memorize the names and personalities of 101 side characters.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own "The Mortal Instruments".

;

* * *

For the next few hours, Jace stood in the hospital room, leaning gently against the wall farthest from the redheaded girl. She was sleeping—something that looked more to him like she was feigning slumber to avoid conversation—and he had little to do in the near-empty hospital with no one but a drowsy girl beside him.

_She's different_, Jace thought with an appraising look. The thoughts were strange, but they rang true—he had yet to meet someone who acted the same way the provenly selfless girl did, but he found himself mildly wishing that he knew more people similar to her.

He was unsure as to what made her unique, but there was a certain something about the girl that made him feel disconcerted. It could have been anything ranging from her long legs to her flaming hair, but there was a nuance to her that made him want to know her better.

He didn't know what it was, but it confused, and there was nothing that Jace hated more than feeling lost. He scowled, a natural look for him, and sat himself down in a chair, willing his eyes away from the mysterious redhead and proceeding to look over the small file he had on her.

Her name was Clarissa Adele Fray, and she was nineteen years old, much too young to have been targeted by a criminal. There were three people on her emergency contact list: Simon Lewis, Luke Garroway, and Jocelyn Fray—most likely the people he had met up with earlier. The information on her was small, but he could gather that she was raised by only Jocelyn, and was an art major at a community college he didn't recognize.

She had no criminal record, and he couldn't spot a man who would try to kill her through the black and white words describing her—though he didn't feel them to be truly describing her. Jace believed humans to be complex, too complicated to put down on simple paper, but the FBI didn't seem to share his theories on how complex human beings could be.

He was reaching the end of his paperwork when the door opened, and a tall Indonesian man in a white coat stepped into the room, his steps much more dramatic than necessary. His eyes were almost yellow, laced by some strange eye makeup that was loaded with shimmering glitter, and Jace winced at the way the light reflected off of the sparkles on the Asian man's cheekbones and into his eyes.

"Excuse me," Jace said, arching a golden eyebrow at the Asian man, "Who are you?"

"Look at the coat." He smoothed down the lab coat for emphasis, obviously trying to clue Jace in that he was some type of doctor, but the blonde man was confused all the same.

"What," His eyes scanned the glittery man's name tag, "Mr. Bane, are you planning on doing with Ms. Fray?" His voice was a bit too formal—Clary seemed too young for him to call her by her surname—but he stood simply, walking over to the lying redhead.

"I'm going to check how well her shoulder is healing, and evaluate the proper time to send her home."

"Shouldn't you remove your eye makeup before you open up wounds? You know, so that your glitter doesn't fall in and infect her shoulder with fairy dust?" Jace asked sarcastically. The Asian man gave him a flippant wave of his hand, telling him without words that the question was too silly for him to pay attention to.

"You teenagers are too scared of individuality." He said, taking a small pair of scissors and starting at the gauze around Clary's arm. He gently lifted her arm, unwinding the fabric and half-ignoring Jace.

"No, I'm afraid that my charge will die before she leaves the hospital due to some form of glitter poisoning, Mr. Bane."

"Call me Magnus," He said, pulling the gauze away and observing Clary's shoulder. Jace came closer to the bed to observe the wound, and Magnus let him, "And I can assure you that this is much too high quality to flake and fall into her blood."

"Or you could come to work, bare faced." Jace offered. "I take the hardship of leaving my makeup at home when I'm called to kill someone, so you have the ability to leave the makeup home when you're trying to keep people from dying."

"What're you doing killing people, Blondie? You aren't much older than I am." Magnus remarked, looking up to the blonde boy. He was slightly disappointed that his eyes weren't blue—he had no eye candy for the moment—but looked back down to his subject after a brief pause.

"I'm in the FBI," Jace didn't bother pulling out his badge, "And my name is Agent Jonathan Wayland."

"Oh? It the word 'agent' a part of your name?"

"To you, it is." Jace glanced down at Clary, looking to see if she stirred as Magnus cleaned her shoulder with some thick substance, looking to have the consistency of toothpaste. He snapped in front of her face, but she seemed to be out cold. "Did you drug her?"

"She's just a heavy sleeper, I assume—you're the one who knows her. To her, I'm nothing more than a passing fancy."

"I'm not sure if you know what a 'passing fancy' is, and I don't know her too well, either—my last conversation with her wasn't the friendliest." Jace looked down to see if she seemed to be close to waking up, but she was still sleeping. "She thinks she's tough enough to go without a guard."

"Guard? What happened to her?" Magnus asked, and Jace gave him an incredulous look.

"How the hell did you get your doctorate if you can't deduce that getting shot at isn't an everyday thing for most teenagers?"

"It seems like your sort would get shot at frequently, and I'm sure that you're nothing more than a teenager." At twenty-two, Magnus was hardly one to talk about people being too young for their professions, but he liked to believe that he was an exception to most rules.

Jace started to remark that he'd be of drinking age in a few months, but he was cut off by his phone ringing with a familiar number, "Alec. Where the hell have you been?"

His partner's voice was buzzed with static, and the blonde man had to strain his ears to hear him. "Isabelle got caught up in buying a new holster for her gun. Where am I supposed to meet you?"

"I'd say Ms. Fray's new residence, but no one is moved in yet, so come meet me at the hospital." Jace said, and he was sure that Alec nodded at the other end—he knew Alec better than he did himself, and could copy his movements even when he wasn't in close contact with him.

"All right." The phone turned off, and Jace looked back to Magnus. He was about to form some question pertaining to how long it took to wrap a bullet wound—he had seen it done in a matter of moments—but a waking redhead cut him off.

"Who is Alec?" Jace swore under his breath, wondering slightly how long Clary had been awake for. He decided not to ask, and chose the more noble option of answering her question.

"He's my partner."

"I didn't know you played for my team," Magnus brought himself into the exchange with unhelpful words, and Jace turned back to look at the Asian man with a disbelieving look.

"You need to broaden your vocabulary, Bane. When I say partner, I mean that he works alongside me, and he has ever since we were training." Jace refrained from supplying that it was possible that Alec played for the same team Magnus obviously did, and looked to the bewildered girl for her reaction.

"Are you going to invite the rest of the seven dwarves to live in my home?" Clary hissed, her eyes narrowing. Though the thought was random, Jace decided that he liked her eyes, and wouldn't mind spending more time watching the emerald orbs.

"Clary, that would never happen—I'd only invite my fellow dwarves if you had skin white as snow and hair black as night." She looked curious as to his knowledge of Disney princess movies, and he gave her a charming grin to distract her, "And it will only be Alec stationed at your house. He won't accompany you outside as I will—he will only watch and keep surveillance of your home when I cannot."

"And what will people think of some . . . armed man following me around constantly?"

"Magnus," Jace said, looking up to the Asian man, "Can you go for a moment? I need to speak with Ms. Fray." Magnus left, and Clary's scowl deepened.

"Why can't my doctor be here? Are you going to smuggle me with a pillow so that you would get your pay without doing your job?"

"There's a shortage of natural redheads in this world—it would be a crime to kill you." Jace said, sitting himself down on the side of her bed, "And I'm going to be your boyfriend."

"Excuse me?"

"After you were shot, you met a devilishly handsome man in the waiting room, devastated over the death of his grandmother. When he saw a beautiful redhead come out with a wounded shoulder," Clary's cheeks flamed at his subtle compliment, and he grinned, "He comforted you, and it was love at first sight. After the incident, you were too afraid to live alone, so you moved to a smaller town and invited the man to live with you so that he could protect you from the bad guys."

"That's . . . insanity." Clary said. He spoke simply, but she processed the idea slowly, and shook her head quickly, "That won't work."

"You never know until you try," Jace gave her another weakening smile, and she forced her vision to his chest, finding that keeping her eyes on his bulletproof vest was as good of a distraction as any. "It could work, Clary."

"And why would my boyfriend be armed and suited with a bulletproof vest and half a dozen knives?"

"Counting the weapons in my pocketknife, I have well over half a dozen knifes, and I'm offended by the understatement." She gave him a hard look, and he continued speaking. "And the only reason I am so obviously armed is because your mother called while I was home, and she wanted me as soon as possible. Usually, my guns are hidden in holsters, not a simple belt, and my vest would either be absent or underneath a shirt."

"And the tattoos? I'm fairly sure that I don't look like the type to go for a blonde guy with a tattoo halfway up his neck."

"Haven't you ever seen the awful movies they put on at nighttime? It's a beautifully retching display when the innocent girl falls for the alluring bad boy, complete with a motorcycle and tattoos." Jace touched the back of his neck where the top of the tattoo laid thoughtfully.

"What is your tattoo of?" Clary asked suddenly, another wave of curiosity washing over her. Jace pulled himself out of his daze, and offered her a devilish smile.

"If you want to practice the part of my girlfriend, you can find out." Jace winked at her, and Clary's cheeks flamed more brightly as she tugged her gaze away from him and his flirtations. She was unsure as to how she would handle living with him and playing the part of his girlfriend if a simple flirtation would make her cheeks flare so—she was an awful actress.

Her heart monitor flared due to her embarrassment and racing heart. She scowled, looking for some cord, "How do you shut this thing off?"

"You could stop breathing," Jace supplied. "But you should have a doctor's consent before turning that off. You could accidentally look my way again, and put yourself into some sort of coma from the shock—don't fret, though. I'm sure my allure will wear off in a decade or two.

"You're infuriating."

"Thank you."

"I'm going back to sleep," Clary murmured, and Jace laughed. She frowned, looking back up at him, "Why is that so funny?"

"You use sleeping as an excuse each time you try to avoid conversation with me. Soon, you'll be feigning narcolepsy." Clary only scowled, repeating that she wished to sleep, and closed her eyes before he could protest or tease her again. She heard his soft laughter, and felt him rise from where he sat on the bed to lean against the opposing wall.

Clary tried to fall asleep, but after sleeping on and off for the last half of the day, she was fairly awake. She attempted lying still and trying not to fidget, but she was soon saved by the sound of someone loudly opening the door.

She blinked her eyes open, expecting to find Magnus, but instead found a stranger with black hair and icy eyes looking from her to Jace quickly. The more familiar Asian man followed, and Clary sat halfway up in her bed to look at the three men in the room.

"Alec," Jace said, welcoming the brunette man and cluing Clary in on who he was, "Meet Clarissa Adele Fray." Clary wanted to ask how he knew her middle name, but thought it best not to know how much he knew.

"Do I get an introduction?" Magnus asked, his eyes seeming to devour Alec. Instead of blushing, Alec's eyes widened, and he seemed to be trying and failing at getting out a coherent sentence.

"Special Agent Alexander Lightwood of the FBI, sir." Jace gave him a strange look, unable to process why his friend had called the doctor 'sir', but Magnus only looked amused.

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Special Agent Alexander Lightwood. Are you one of her little helpers, or are you going to stay around here?" Magnus' yellow eyes made it obvious that he would prefer the latter, and Alec seemed to be trying to stammer out an answer.

"I—I'm not sure when we're leaving." Alec managed, busying himself in tugging the hem of his shirt down. Clary looked at Alec curiously, wondering why he was so flustered over an extravagant man flirting with him, but decided it better to ask later.

Jace's phone rang, and he slipped it out of his pocket with a fluid movement. Clary watched him. All of his movements, no matter how simple they were, were elegant in some way. He moved with perfect posture and graceful steps, reminding Clary of a cat, always ready to spring into action. He glanced towards her, the amused flash in his golden eyes telling her that he had caught her staring, and answered the ringing phone, "Agent Wayland."

He listened for a short time, nodding and making sounds to signal that he was listening to the speaker, and bid the caller goodbye quickly. He seized the bag Alec was holding, tossing Clary a few garments—both too large on her—and looked to the clock on the wall.

"Come on, Clary." He said, "Get dressed, and meet Alec and I outside."

"What?" She asked, noticing that the two other men had already exited the room, leaving her alone with Jace.

"That was your mother. She said that your house is prepared, so get changed into something that isn't covered in blood," He opened the door, about to step outside, and paused to look back at her, "And though I'm sure it won't be difficult, get ready to pretend that you're in love with me." A flash of white teeth came, and Clary was alone in the room.

;

* * *

Question of the day:

**What character(s) do you want to be introduced in the next chapter? **I have a few in mind, but you'll just have to wait and see for that :)

leave a review ;3


	4. 04

**Notes: **This update took a bit longer than I wanted—I just finished _Allegiant_, and I'm in a depression over the ending—but it's here, and you know what they say: better late than never c:

This is a little bit longer than the previous chapters, and there are no new characters introduced in this chapter. There are brief mentions of **Isabelle Lightwood**—expect her to be introduced as a side character in a few chapters.

Thank you to all my reviewers, and I hope you like this chapter where a fraction of **Jace**'s softer side is revealed.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own "The Mortal Instruments".

;

* * *

Clary soon found that the clothes were many sizes too large, and difficult to keep on. The jeans dragged against the floor and were too large around the waist, and threatened to fall to the floor. Grumbling, she tore away a strip of fabric from her hospital gown and tied it around her waist into a makeshift belt, praying it would hold up the heavy fabric. It seemed to stay up, and she sighed a small breath of relief and slid the large shirt over her shoulders. She frowned—if she tripled in size, the shirt would still hold much to the imagination.

Clary wasn't the promiscuous type, and hated wearing clothes that displayed her full body, but she still was annoyed by the way the covering clothes hung over her small frame. She made a mental note to remind the ice-eyed boy of her sizes as she caught sight of her reflection, wincing.

Her skin looked more pale than it was usually, and the freckles on her arms, neck, and face—though scarce—stood out against her ghostly skin. Her eyes looked startled, and her flaming hair was tangled and sticking upwards in strange places. She frowned, trying to smooth the hair that showed heavy sleep. The matted hair wouldn't yield under her pressing fingertips, and with a sigh, she looked away from her reflection.

When she opened the door, she heard a stifled groan, and quickly came to the conclusion that someone had been leaning against the door before she opened it. Looking around the side of it, she saw Alec rubbing the back of his head and frowning, seeming to be stifling a glare at Clary. A traitorous smile slid onto Jace's face, and Alec's glare shifted to his partner.

"Very flattering," Jace said, raising his arm in an attempt to wrap an arm around the lithe girl. She ducked under his arm before it could land around her waist.

"Try and let me savor my last few moments of faking being single." Jace let out a short laugh, surprising Clary by taking no offense to the comment. She arched her eyebrows, always being unable to raise only a single brow, and he treated her with a questioning look.

"Is there a problem, Clarissa?" She frowned at the use of her proper forename, "Do you want me to desire being your fake boyfriend? Or rather, are you upset that I didn't make a true declaration of wanting to share a bed with you?"

"Is that your definition of a relationship? Meeting someone, eating spaghetti, and jumping into the bed together?"

"No. Sometimes, it's steak instead of spaghetti," Jace grinned at the annoyed girl, "And sometimes, the heat of the passion is too heavy to wait for a bed, and a simple couch has to suffice."

Clary rolled her eyes at the attractive man beside her, giving him a disbelieving look. "I thought that members of the FBI often had better things to do than rip their clothes off and pick up misguided women. You know, things like shooting people and guarding the president."

"For the second time, I'm not in the Secret Service." Jace quipped, though he didn't seem frustrated in the least. His golden eyes flickered over to Alec, but he was too busy watching the halls for potential threats to bring himself into the exchange.

"Why not? Are you not talented enough to protect the president? If so, I may need another bodyguard."

"Don't call me a bodyguard." He frowned, "And I wouldn't want to be in the Secret Service. Even if I did, I'm twenty. I'd hardly say that I'm old enough to be in that line of work."

"How are you twenty and in the FBI?" Clary asked, looking to Alec. Even he—though still young—seemed to be older than twenty, and the young age didn't make sense for such a serious line of work.

_Can't be that serious if he's spending his time running round gun happy and protecting teenage girls_, Clary mused silently. She glanced up at the blonde man beside her to see if she mistakenly voiced her thoughts like she had so many times, but his static face told her that her thoughts went unheard.

"I attended military school when I was twelve—I wasn't in the military, but I trained like any soldier would. That's where I met Alec and his little sister." Jace said, rubbing the back of his neck. Clary wanted to ask why he attended military school so early, then found a spike of curiosity pertaining to Alec's younger sister.

She wasn't so interested in his sister, but more so about her relationship to Jace—he smiled when he mentioned her, and the redhead was curious. She found herself wondering if the golden boy had feelings for his best friend's younger sister, and why the thought of Jace being in love with someone sent a prick of anger through her.

More than that, Clary wanted to know why she gave a damn about the love life of a man she hardly knew, and if the spark of anger was some demented form of jealousy, a jealousy she was unfamiliar with—she wasn't a very jealous person, something she had found from her indifference when girls flirted with Simon. She couldn't bring herself to care when Simon brushed off a girl who talked to him, so why would she care about Jace's romantic entanglements?

"Why so young?" She finally asked, taking a while to form the coherent sentence through her vine of tarred thoughts.

"Hmm?" Jace looked down at her—he was a good half foot taller than she—and seemed to take a minute to remember what she could be talking about. "Daddy issues. Nothing to worry your head over."

Alec's gaze met Jace's for a short second—it was an almost unnoticeable exchange, but Clary caught it. She found herself quickly interested in something other than Alec's little sister—the jealousy was trivial, but the look that the two friends clued her in that Jace's 'daddy issues' were something more serious than he made it off to be.

With a last look at the now solemn man, Clary sighed, slowing her pace so that the two boys could lead her through the twisted halls of the hospital.

;

She was led to a black car—one that could blend with the night with ease—and ushered into the passenger seat by Jace, giving her the explanation that he wanted her to get to know the way to her new home. She wanted to interject that she would most likely not be making her way to wherever she would be living from the hospital often, but the shooter flickered across her mind, and she pushed the comment back.

The car stopped after half an hour of driving through traffic, and Alec slid out of the backseat. Clary looked to Jace, and he explained quickly. "He's going in to get clothes that fit you and some supplies."

"Supplies?"

"Food, water, toiletries, batteries, the usual." Clary frowned, 'batteries' seeming a bit out of place with the rest of the list, but she supposed that batteries were somehow vital to members of the FBI. She looked up to the attractive man in the seat parallel to her, and he caught her gaze, "Hmm?"

"Where're we going?" She asked, the question coming out a bit too quickly, having meant to ask 'where are we' and 'where are we going' at the same time. He glanced out the window, resting his hands on the steering wheel of the car.

"Portsmouth."

Clary's head snapped over to him—a difficult gesture because she was already looking at him—and she pulled on his shoulder so that he would be looking at her rather than staring blankly out the window. "Portsmouth, Rhode Island?" Jace nodded slowly, and she hit his arm without a pause, the action making her hand sore where it made contact with his taut muscle, "What the hell, Jace? You said we were going a few blocks away from home."

"When I said blocks, I was referencing the old English term of 'block'. When America was first founded, the English way of speaking was predominant, and they called each state a block—"

"That isn't a thing." Clary said impatiently, though she was impressed with his ability to make up untrue facts so fluidly.

"Look, Clary," Jace said, his chiseled face hardening into a serious tone, "You aren't safe back at your home. Someone tried to kill you, and they'll try again if your mother's intuition is correct. This wasn't my idea, but I agree with it—I've been through a hell of a lot of people who called me on some bullshit emergency, but by the looks of this, this isn't something to ignore."

"I'm not ignoring it." She spoke slowly, her words coming out roughly through barely parted lips and half grit teeth, "But you're being an idiot, and not just you. What if he tries to hurt someone close to me, because that person is the next best option? What if he tries to kill my mom because she's the closest thing to me?"

"Clary—"

"I'm not letting my mom die, Jace!" Clary's green eyes hardened, and Jace's own softened.

He admittedly had never been the most close with his parents—though for a reason—but considered Alec and Isabelle to be some sort of extended family to him. He would throw himself in front of a bullet for each one of them—and he had before. Throwing them out as bait for an insane man was at the bottom of his list.

"I know you don't want to let anyone die." His voice was softer, and she looked surprised by his kind tone, "I'll try to reason with Jocelyn. I can't make any promises, but I'll make a call—"

"Thank you," The redhead smiled brilliantly, and he smiled too, her happiness infectious. His eyes remained on her, watching her eyes in particular—they were unearthly, seemingly luminescent, but the green orbs were strange in a good way, a way that made him want to continue looking at her. She brought her face down, and he watched her for a moment more before looking up to see Alec opening the trunk door of the car.

His friend slipped into the backseat, and he tossed a skirt and tank top at Clary. The throw was awkward from the tight space of the car, and nearly hit Clary in the face, but Jace's practiced hands seized the fabric before she could get hit. He looked at the clothes incredulously, holding up the top and small skirt, "Alec. It's forty degrees out."

"She can find clothes herself when we get to Rhode Island." Alec said, looking to be through with shopping for women's clothes.

"These are fine." Clary interjected, glaring at Alec when the words 'Rhode Island' slipped his lips, "I can wear them to sleep, or something."

Jace watched Clary pull her cell phone out of her pocket and hit a number on speed dial, pressing on the speakers, "Simon?" Jace rolled his eyes, having expected Clary to call her mother instead of the annoying boy.

"Clary, are you okay?" _Nice job, Simon. You managed eight seconds of a conversation with her without a proclamation of undying love_, Jace thought. Usually, the confidence in him left him with no mental filter, but he was fairly sure that his charge would hit him again if he said the words aloud, and he didn't want her injuring her hand.

"I'm fine, Simon. Where are you? Did anything happen to Mom? Did she tell you about Rhode Island?" She asked, quickly firing off questions as though she only had a few moments to speak to the boy.

"I'm at your new home, nothing happened to her, and yes she did." Simon paused, and there was the buzzing of someone speaking in the background. "Luke says hello."

"Tell him I said hello back," Clary said, then frowned, "Are you okay with it?"

"I'm fine, Clary. Someone tried to shoot you, and even though the person who has to protect you is a self-centered, egotistical, dye-blonde—"

"You forgot about wannabe goth and gun happy." Jace cut in, and Clary held a finger to her lips. Jace could nearly hear Simon's frown from the other end, and tried not to laugh.

"I was getting there." Simon said. "Even though he's all of that, you need protection, and the best protection you can get is protection from a guy who is too cocky to be alive."

"Ah, I knew we were forgetting one." Jace smirked, and Clary mouthed 'shut it' to him, much more amused by the debacle than he should have been.

"Simon, calm down. You can . . . fight him, or whatever men do to resolve their differences."

"Will he be challenging me to Call of Zelda?" Jace quipped, and Simon made a movement that sounded like punching something soft to release his anger—a couch, perhaps.

"It's _Call of Duty_ or _Legends of Zelda_, not both," Simon said impatiently, "And I'm not going to be fighting this . . . buffoon."

"Are we using eighteenth century insults now?" Jace asked, opening his mouth to speak more, but the annoyed girl in the middle of the call cut him off.

"Bye, Simon." She hung up the phone quickly, not desiring to be in the middle of another interaction between the quarreling boys for a while. She looked up to find a smile on Jace's face, watching as he tried to hide his obvious amusement over the exchange, "What?"

Instead of answering, Jace started the car rather quickly and pulled out of the lot of the grocery store, making the redhead cringe with the quickness of the sudden movement. She quickly pulled a seat belt over her, looking up at Jace to find him shaking his head in disbelief over her actions.

"Is there a problem?" She questioned impatiently—she was finding that she had an extremely short temper for the man she hardly knew. The fact that he could so easily frustrate her infuriated her only more, much to her dismay.

"You're trying to act brave and begging me to let you go home, yet you can't even drive without fastening her seat belt?" Clary frowned, her thoughts crossing between telling him that she would never 'beg' him for everything, telling him to shut up, or informing him that going without the protective belt was illegal.

"Shut up. I'd never beg you for anything, and you of all people should know the law on seat belts." She didn't mean to go for all three thoughts, and earned a strange look from both the driving man and the silent man in the backseat.

"Why should I know the law on seat belts?" Jace gave her a questioning look.

"Because you're in law enforcement." Clary supplied, and Jace gave her a hard look from across the wheel of the car.

"I'm not a cop, Clary." Jace informed her, most definitely not for the first time that day. Clary laughed softly, and the hard look he gave her made her even more amused. She put a hand to her mouth, trying to cover her laughter.

Instead of waiting for her to answer, Jace began fiddling with the stereo system of the car, playing a song by My Chemical Romance, one named _Teenagers_ that she recognized well. She settled back in her seat, letting her eyes fall closed. She had no interest in sleeping—she had slept much too much that day—but had some interest in finding peace from the infuriating man next to her.

;

Though she stayed away, the time seemed to move more quickly than it had while she was quarreling with Jace, and she soon felt the car jerk to a pause. The sudden movement brought Clary's green eyes to open, and she looked over at Jace with a narrow look, wondering why he had stopped the car so badly—though there wasn't much room to drive in New York, a kind of stop like that was easy to avoid.

She heard Jace curse softly under his breath, and watched the attractive man as he swung his door open. Clary and Alec both slipped out after him, curious as to why he had stopped so suddenly and exited the car in the middle of the road. She gave a concerned look to the car, hoping that they would not cause too much traffic, and took a quick few steps around to the front of the car where Jace was kneeling.

At first, Clary thought that he was examining the wheels of the car, but a few steps forward told him otherwise. He was examining an injured animal—a dog—and Clary went closer to kneel beside him, lightly stroking the ear of the shivering dog.

"I thought I hit him," Jace said softly, the gentle tone to his voice cluing her in that he was an animal person. "But he was hurt before the car came—he was only a foot in front of the car's wheel."

"How do you know he wasn't hurt by the car?" She asked, cringing when she saw a violent shiver pass through the small dog—his fur was short, and the night air was rough to him. Jace's elegant fingers made their way to the dog's pulse points, checking to see how quickly or slowly it was breathing.

"No tire marks. He was in a fight with another animal—see these marks?" He held out a hand to Clary, gesturing for her to move closer to him, and she did as told. Her thigh brushed against his, and a brush of heat flared through her at the brief contact. "They're bite marks, a bit like puncture wounds."

Clary decided against commenting on how he would be the expert on wounds and followed his golden gaze to the marks, shivering when she saw how deeply they ran, "Should we call 911? Or take him to a hospital?"

For once, Jace's voice was soft, and there were no traces of anger or sarcasm to his dizzying features, "Alec," Jace commanded, and his friend quickly looked to him, "Take the car, and find some sort of animal hospital. Clary and I will wait here, and call a taxi to take us to her home."

"Shouldn't we take Clary home first?" Alec asked, and Jace shook his head firmly.

"Clary isn't wounded—" He paused abruptly, glancing to Clary's left shoulder. The wound didn't show, but the bandaging around it made the shirt show a bump where the bullet had hit. "She doesn't have an open wound, and she won't die of hypothermia if we wait twenty minutes for a taxi."

Alec didn't wait for a second command—though he was older, he often took Jace's word for random matters—and climbed into the car. Jace walked around the side of the car, gently lifting the dog in his arms and helping to fasten him in the car.

Clary watched his slow movements with some stun—he was made of taut muscle and sarcasm, and she hadn't imagined that he would have such a gentle side towards animals or wounded creatures. Hell, she didn't even know that he could move so slowly, or hold something so gingerly—it showed a side of him that she was unfamiliar with, and a side of him that intrigued her.

She looked away as he finished loading the dog into the car, letting her eyes flicker to the trees as the vehicle sped away and Jace walked back to her. Even with her eyes off of him, she wasn't able to help but think about the look in his stunning eyes or kindness in his face—even though it was only present for a moment, it was still there, and it was disconcerting to her.

Sighing softly, she knew that the golden eyes would keep her awake that night.

;

* * *

**Secondary Notes: **The ending was a bit of filling, but I wanted to find a way to show Jace's sensitive side, and nothing is better than helping injured animals, right?

In the next update, expect **Jace** and **Clary** to have a few moments while trying to find a taxi in the middle of nowhere ;3

Question of the day:

**What inspired your penname? **_Frays_ is based off of "The Mortal Instruments"—I was thinking of either _Frays_, _Malecs_, or _Morgensterns_, and I decided that I liked _Frays_ the best c:

drop a review in the box c:


	5. 05

**Notes: **Thank you to all my readers—I'm so ecstatic that I've reached 50 reviews. And thank you to **Joy** (outside the crayon box) for being the 50th reviewer.

There's a few . . . _close_ moments between **Jace** and **Clary** this chapter, so you can look forward to that as you read.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own "The Mortal Instruments".

;

* * *

"You're going to die."

Jace's voice rang through the silence that had settled over them, and Clary gave him a confused look. Was he trying to reveal that he was a serial killer, or that he was the man who had tried to kill her earlier? Her eyes widened in some confused alarm, but she tried to calm her mind down and find some reasoning through her confusion—why would he kill her?

It made sense that he would choose now to kill her—the only people in sight were a few passing cars, and they were somewhere between New York and Rhode Island that was filled with only a cluster of trees and a one-way street. He could use his gun, or one of the random knives he kept with him, and he could easily stab her in that very moment. He could—

"Clary!" Jace's alarmed voice brought her attention—more alarmed than her thoughts—and she heard a horn loudly blaring in her ears. The moment the horn crashed against her ear, she felt something heavy against her—his body—and was thrown to the side of the road, away from the street and the speeding car that had come inches away from impaling her.

The force that he had exerted on her was great—he was both strong and heavy—and she hit the ground below him. She groaned over the heavy weight of his body on top of hers, and she tried to roll him off of her, but their tangled limbs only caused them to roll a few feet off of the side of the road until they both ran into a tree.

"What the hell was that, Clary? Are you _trying_ to kill yourself?" Jace growled, and she could feel his steady heart beating against her own (which was beating three times as fast as his). They were much closer than she was comfortable, but the toned man was on top of her, and she couldn't move under his weight unless he allowed her to.

A flush of heat ran over her, and she felt something that seemed to be exploding inside of her, and she was sure it wasn't only her quickly paced heart. The space between them was too small, and she was finding herself noticing strange things—he smelled of leather, metal, and soap, a combination that sounded strange but made her knees weak. There was a small scar on the corner of his lip, and it was colored white. His body was extremely hot, but she wasn't uncomfortable with the heat or weight that was trapping her.

"You told me that you were going to kill me!" Clary argued, her green eyes narrowing at him. He didn't budge from his place on top of her, and his eyes didn't wander his face as hers wanted to—he was staring into her bright green eyes in a way that made her want to look somewhere else, anywhere but back at his unearthly eyes.

"I told you that you were going to die." Jace said impatiently, sounding exasperated with her already. His weight on top of her shifted so that their faces were not so close, but the lesser space between them did nothing to calm her racing heart.

"Why the hell would you tell me that I was going to die? Who does that?" Clary asked, frustrated. "You don't tell a girl who just got shot that she's going to die—that's just as good as telling me that you have an anvil and want to crush my skull with it."

He blinked at the strange comparison, arching an eyebrow in a perfect fashion that made her jealous. "I'm complimented that you think so highly of my strength, but I'm fairly sure that I wouldn't be able to lug an anvil around without you noticing." He felt her fingers brush against her side, and though it was covered by a shirt, she still jerked away and flushed hotly. "And I told you that you were going to die because you were standing in the middle of the street like an imbecile, waiting for a car to run over you. Which it almost did."

"Don't call me an imbecile."

"I'm sorry—can you give me another word for 'girl who stands in the middle of the road, hears a devilishly handsome man telling her that she will get run over, believes that he's trying to kill her by warning her, and proceeds to stand her until a SUV comes her way?'"

Clary groaned, trying to run a hand through her hair in frustration, but the movement was impossible—one of her hands was pinned awkwardly behind her back, and the other would strike him in the face with her elbow if she made the gesture. She tried not to think that perhaps he deserved to be struck in the face, "I thought that you were trying to kill me."

"By saving your life? By that logic, we should execute Batman, and sue Superman for killing the car that was coming to hit the damsel in distress." Jace replied plainly.

"Are you comparing yourself to classic Marvel superheroes?" Clary asked incredulously, watching his hands. He was messing with something in his pocket, and she frowned. "What is that? Is it so important that you can't get off of me before playing with that?"

"What I'm playing with," Jace tugged on something, and she was brought forwards in a jerking motion. The movement caused his lips to brush against her ear, and Clary released a stuttered breath, a nervous air surrounding her. The place where his soft lips brushed left a mark of heat, and she felt her cheeks turn redder than they already were. She resisted the urge to curse under her breath—she was never the most profane, but blushing like a madman by Jace's actions was nothing if not embarrassing for her. Luckily, he didn't seem to see her distress. "Is a pocket knife."

"And you're trying to convince me that you aren't trying to kill—"

"Because," He spoke slowly, "It's stuck to your jeans, so unless you want me to cut you out of your jeans, you'd better stay still and let me work."

"How—what—you practically stabbed me, Jace! How the hell do you expect to 'protect' me if you can barely tackle me without coming close to ripping out my vital organs?" Clary stammered. The close proximity made it difficult still to form coherent sentences, and when his golden eyes flickered over to meet hers, her mind became even more tangled.

"With a dull wine opener?" Jace shifted so that she could see the object twisted in her jeans, and it was the same instrument as he had claimed. She rolled her eyes, wondering why his wine opener was dull of all things, "It's still blunt, so be careful when we roll over."

"Roll over—"

"On the count of three, shift your weight to the left so that you'll land on top of me without bruising yourself." Clary nodded slightly, lips parted. "One . . . two . . . three." He rolled to the side moments after she did—she was unsure if by 'on three' he meant at the number three or after it—and she ended up with a leg somehow tangled between his and her flaming hair in his mouth.

"Nice job protecting me, Jace. You can't pull me off of the floor."

"I just threw myself in front of a moving vehicle so that your pretty face wouldn't be dismantled, and you're insulting me for it?" Jace raised an eyebrow, and she took a sharp intake of chilled air as his hand brushed against her thigh. Some strange desire to have him closer than he already washed over her, possibly without the barriers of clothing between them.

His comment registered slowly, and she tried to ignore the compliment—he could throw a hint of flirtation into a sentence so easily that it was hard to notice at times, and the compliments he nonchalantly added to his sentences made her feel dizzy.

"You told me that you would kill me. If you had thought to say, 'hey, there's a SUV about to dismember you, try moving out of the street' I might have listened." Clary protested. She fumbled around, trying to find some sort of knife on him, "Give me a knife, Jace."

"I'm not giving an angry teenage girl a knife."

"I'm not a teenage girl, and I'm not angry." Clary said, examining his belt to see if he had any easily accessible knifes that she could grab.

"You're nine_teen_. As far as I'm concerned, the word 'teen' being in your age means that you're a teenager—you're on the older edge of the spectrum of teenage years, but still a teenager."

"You're hardly older than I am," She said, looking over his young features, "Now give me the knife. I promise not to try anything."

"I'm twenty, but I'm luckily not a teenager." He said, fairly sure that she wasn't truly sleeping when he told Magnus this fact before—he had trouble sleeping a full six hours a night, and just imagining Clary sleeping in a near-nonstop pattern was impossible to fathom. Thinking back, he remembered that he had reminded her of his age while she was conscious a second time. Heeding her second comment, he pulled a small knife out of a hiding place in his pants and handed it to her, still not trusting her with a larger blade.

"You're a year older than me—stop trying to act so high and mighty." Before he could reply, she cut away a hole in the large jeans, and the wine opener came loose. She moved her leg slightly to see if it was still attached to his weapon before rolling off of him and to the side, lying on the floor and closing her eyes.

Jace tried not to laugh at her expression of relief, trying to deny the fact to himself that he wished she was still on top of him—her skin was both warm and smooth, and it was scented of some addictive blend of lemons, vanilla, and a natural scent.

To distract his mind from the lithe girl lying besides him, Jace stood quickly and jogged over to the side of the street, finding some peak of luck as a taxi cab passed by. He held up a hand, and the vehicle stopped, "Clary,"

Clary groaned, taking a few moments to try to push herself off of the ground. She was not fast enough for Jace, and he impatiently jogged over to her, grasping her elegant hand in his calloused one and pulling her up quickly. He overestimated her weight—he thought she was heavier despite the fact that she had laid on top of him for several minutes—and she stumbled into his chest with the momentum of the movement.

Jace steadied her before she could register that she was unbalanced, and walked away from her. She almost fell over again with the surprise of his sudden movement away from her. Taking a moment to take in her bearings, she followed Jace to the bright cab and slipped into the back seat after him, deciding to remain silent for as long as possible.

The blonde man beside her pulled his phone out of his pocket, dialing who she assumed to be Alec. Straining her ears, she attempted to listen to the conversation, one that quickly ranged from the injured dog—who was fine—to the shooter to an 'I'm doing fine,' from Jace's end. That bit didn't make too much sense to Clary—what would make him anything but fine?

She looked at Jace curiously, taking in his features in more detail than she was able to before. He was attractive, but that was a given. He was sarcastic, and that seemed to make up the main of his personality. He was infuriating—he made her want to hit something—but there was something about him, something that ran under his good looks and sarcasm. There was some allure to him, and something about his golden gaze never ceased to make her feel as though she was falling.

He caught her gaze with a sideways glance and the corner of a smile, and she snapped her head to the side, looking out the window of the car and engrossing herself—or rather, pretending to be—the trees whipping by the window of the quick car. She heard a crackling sound, and saw the first splashes of water slam into the blackened streets.

Jace's gaze followed hers, "It's rain." She assumed he wasn't talking to Alec anymore, and she turned back to Jace with a curious look at his plain statement.

"Yes, it is." Her fingers curled for a moment into half of a fist, and then relaxed, something she did when she had the wish to paint something. Jace was watching Clary's fingers, but he didn't comment on the way her fingers moved, or question her as to what the gesture meant.

"You seem strangely fascinated by the rain—you're a New Yorker. Surely, you're no stranger to rain." Jace commented.

"I'm not." Clary said, her bright eyes not moving from the splashing drops. "It's just . . . different."

Jace nodded, but Clary did not see the gesture. Instead of looking at him to wait for a reply, she watched the cloudy windows, smiling as a few drops rolled down the side of the window. She began to play a childhood game in her mind, watching the raindrops and betting on which one would fall first.

"My money's on the fat one." Jace remarked. This distracted Clary, and she momentarily looked to Jace, telling her with his eyes that she thought him insane. She squinted her eyes to look out the window—perhaps he was talking about a fat and skinny man jogging alongside the cab, or something of the sort—but the streets were empty of obese people.

"Excuse me?"

"The fat raindrop." Jace reached over Clary, placing his fingers against the window where a thick drop was falling, "It's heavier."

Clary couldn't help but laugh at his reasoning, finding it peculiar that in that moment, his thoughts were the same as hers. She remembered trying to explain the Raindrop Game to Simon when they were eight, but he gave her a funny look and went back to his book, leaving her to play alone. "I'm going for the tiny one. He can gain speed, and he's cute."

Jace laughed, surprised that Clary—half a stranger—could startle a laugh out of him in a way that even Alec and Isabelle could not manage, "It's a raindrop, Clary. How can a drop of water be attractive to you?"

"I said cute, not attractive." Clary emphasized. "I can find Winnie the Pooh cute, but that doesn't mean I want to give my virginity to him." She looked back to the small raindrop, almost at the bottom, "Come on, just a little more."

The corner of Jace's lips turned up into a smile, and he chose not to comment on the fact that she revealed she was a virgin. It should not have been a surprise to him, but he was sure that there were multiple men who would be glad to take her—Simon included. He was also confident that Clary had no clue that the fact was true, and decided not to say anything, "Mine won."

"No, it didn't." Clary protested, looking back at Jace with a frown on her face, but he could see that she wasn't truly mad. There was some childlike happiness in her green eyes, and he had to struggle to keep a smile off of his own face, finding her near luminescent eyes and shy smile endearing.

"We'll agree to disagree." Jace said simply, giving her a sexy smile, and he saw her gaze flicker to his upturned lips for half of a moment. "But keep in mind, I'm a trained agent, and I was in military school for more than five years. Call me crazy, but I'd believe my observation skills are better than yours."

"You're a cop?" The driver asked them suddenly, slowing down to a speed of 50. Jace's golden eyes narrowed, and he shook his head with a hard look that the driver could see from the rearview mirror.

"I'm an agent in the federal bureau of investigation. I'm not a police officer." Jace pulled his wallet out, flashing his badge and holding it up so that the driver could speed up, "Now, hurry. My girlfriend and I want to get to our new home before eleven." He slipped an arm around Clary's small waist, pulling her close to him.

"You two are in a relationship?" The cab driver asked, and Jace growled lowly—something that only Clary could hear—and made a silent prayer that the man would quit talking. "You don't act like it."

"We disagree on most things, but you know what they say: opposites attract." Clary said, awkwardly leaning her head onto Jace's shoulder. The position was awkward—his muscles were hard, and she was unfamiliar with the loving gesture—and Jace repositioned her, tilting her head so that it fell against the crook of his arm in a comfortable way. Luckily, the driver didn't seem to notice Clary's misstep.

"I thought you said you were a virgin." Jace growled more loudly this time, annoyed by the way the driver eavesdropped on their conversation with too nosy ears. Clary bit her lip, trying to recover from Jace's obvious annoyance.

"I'm saving myself for marriage, but with him, anything can happen." Clary supplied, forcing a giggle, and the cabbie nodded, quieting slightly. Jace let out a relieved sigh, unclenching a fist that he did not know he was holding.

Jace's lips brushed against her ear, and she gasped unevenly at the feeling of burning heat that coursed through her body. It was ridiculous how a small touch could arouse her so—up until then, she didn't even know that she _could_ be aroused—and she held back a shiver.

"Pretend that I'm saying something naughty so that the jackass won't keep talking." Jace whispered gruffly, his voice incredibly low so that the cab driver would have no chance of hearing. She let out a small laugh, but it was out of tightly wound nerves rather than trying to fake some sort of pleasure to the words she was supposed to hear.

_What should I do_, Clary mouthed to Jace. He seemed to understand what she was saying, and glanced up to see if the cab driver was looking at them.

"Where to?" The driver asked, and Jace looked as though he was about to strangle the man, ignoring the fact that it was a perfectly valid question.

"1400, Heron Street. Portsmouth." Jace said gruffly, and the driver nodded, driving more quickly. Jace's voice lowered again, his lips returning to his fake-girlfriend's ears. "Act like I just told you that I wanted you, and wanted to do you in an exotic position."

Clary's eyebrows went up, and her cheeks turned red, though she was unable to act out the scenario—the only sex positions she knew about were 'missionary', 'standing up', and 'dog style', and she wasn't sure how to do half of them. The only man she had dated was a freckled skinny boy in her freshman year of high school, and the farthest they went was kissing—too wet on his side, and a bit disgusted by his saliva-to-lip ratio on her side. The extent of her knowledge on sex was from the movies she watched, and even then, she watched rather clean movies for the most part.

Clary laughed again, and Jace rolled his eyes, "My God, this is like trying to seduce a squirrel." Jace commented, a bit too loudly.

"How much farther is it?" Clary asked. She was hoping that the driver would be distracted by her question from the squirrel comment, and elbowed Jace in the side sharply. Her elbow rammed into a hard wall of muscles in his stomach, and she frowned, wondering if there was any part of him that was not lean.

"We'll be crossing the bridge in a few minutes, and after that it's ten minutes. Fun fact: a scene or two in _Moonrise Kingdom_ was filmed by the very bridge we will be crossing. The movie . . . " Clary and Jace both tuned out the driver as he rambled on about _Moonrise Kingdom_, speaking vividly about the plot and his favorite characters.

"I'm starting to regret not letting the man shoot me." Clary muttered, and she was surprised by Jace's stifled laughter—she hadn't expected him to hear him, but he supposed that he developed good hearing with his FBI training.

His promise of ten minutes turned out to be true, and soon, they rolled up to a house, much larger than Clary's current one. Clary looked to Jace as though to ask him if the address was correct, and he only nodded and quickly handed a fifty to the driver, then grabbed Clary's hand and tugged her out of the taxi.

"You're in a hurry." Clary said. The taxi pulled away quickly, and Jace glared at the car as it rolled away. She put her hands above her head in an attempt to block the rain from drenching her, but she was quickly realizing that her shivering hands did nothing to shield the flood of rain.

"Well, I like to spend as little time as possible around assholes." Clary was about to ask Jace why he thought the driver to be such an ass, but was stopped by a pair of arms crushing her in a hug—or rather, trying to. The man embracing her was not strong enough to crush her between his muscles—or lack thereof.

Clary laughed, and hugged Simon back, "I was worried about you. Are you all right? Is he treating you well? If he isn't, I'll be sure to get a few punches in—"

"I'm fine, Simon." She refrained from telling her best friend that he most definitely would not be able to hold his own in a fight against Jace, and simply laughed at his concerned words.

Out of the corner of her sparkling eyes, she saw Jace looking away from the two, his face the most solemn that she had seen it.

;

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**Secondary Notes: **That was fun to write, and I hope that it was fun to read.

Question of the day:

**How long do you prefer chapters to be?** I think that 2000 words and up is best—my chapters average to be 3k (for this fic), but they vary depending on the action and plot development of the fic.

my review box is hungry—feed it ;3


	6. 06

**Notes: **Thank you to anyone who reviewed, and I'll try to answer a few questions and clear up a few points that were foggy.

Jace, Alec, and Isabelle will be staying with Clary. Simon, Jocelyn, and Luke will return to New York, but they will still be important characters in the fic.

Some chapters are beta-read, some aren't, but I read over everything at least once before posting/publishing.

**Isabelle Lightwood** will be introduced in this chapter.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own "The Mortal Instruments"

;

* * *

Jace's phone (much to his annoyance) was constantly ringing. His calls varied from those from people in needing protection to his superiors to his acquaintances in the force—even a call from a desperate girl needing sex or two—but it was always someone. Most usually, he didn't feel like talking when they called, and often ignored their phone calls and pretended to be busy with some sort of consuming work.

"Your phone is ringing."

Jace's golden eyes flickered upwards to see the brunette boy approaching the cough he was sitting at, Jace's phone in his hand and a loathing look on his face. Jace looked at Simon squarely, "I'm aware of that."

"Then why aren't you picking it up? There could be another damsel in distress who needs protection." Simon remarked, and Jace rolled his eyes at the blatant boy. He grabbed his phone from Simon, hitting the end button so that the ringing would stop, and slid the thin phone into his pocket.

"Clary's my damsel in distress for the moment," Jace said, and he saw Clary's friend's face twist into a scowl. He was trying to look menacing, but the threatening look did nothing to make Jace back down, "I'm not taking any endangered women underneath my wing until I'm sure she's safe."

"You never know—they could be offering you double what Jocelyn is giving you."

Jace's golden eyes narrowed, and he swiftly stood from his sitting position on the couch. The standing position made him tower over Simon in both frame and height, and the nerdy boy suddenly looked uncomfortable. "I'm not going to be an asshat and leave an assignment not even halfway through when there's a madman who wants to kill her. Do you think that's what I'm planning? Do you want me to leave Clary all alone, and leave you to only hope that whoever shot her did it because he was having a bad day?"

"I didn't—"

"It's a fucked up life, Simon. People have bad days, yes, but it sure as hell doesn't mean that you go and shoot some random teenage girl. Did that man wake up, and decide to kill someone at random? Did he go through a rough breakup, and think that shooting a girl at a gathering would make the pain go away?" Jace's voice was louder, now—not quite a yell, but extremely close. "He was trying to kill Clary, and you're trying to summon me to answer a bullshit phone call—which was from one of my closest friends—so I could leave. Would you rather have Clary hurt than let me protect her? Are you so jealous that you find me—someone protecting her, someone who is trained to take a bullet for her—as a threat to your fantasy of a relationship with her?"

Simon's hands clenched and unclenched into fists, but Jace could tell that Simon wouldn't hit him—he wasn't strong enough to leave a mark, and Clary would only become mad at him. Jace had been trained to observe the way people moved around him, and by simply looking at him, Jace could tell that Simon's heart beat for Clary.

Jace wondered if love felt nice. Was it something to make life worth living, or was it another form of hell that constantly plagued your every thought?

Jace, admittedly, had never fallen in love—he had never met a woman who possessed the ability to make his heart skip a beat, and never found one to fill his every thought with ones of her sweet breath. Perhaps love was only for the faint of heart, and Jace's will was too strong to allow himself to fall in love—for the better or the worse, he did not know.

"Just . . . " Simon sighed, the breath making his chest rise and fall with an overly dramatic gesture. "Tell Clary that I'm leaving soon—I'd like to say a goodbye to her before I leave her alone with a stranger."

"I'm hardly a stranger, Simon. A stranger is defined to be someone that one is not familiar with. If you grabbed a random drug dealer off the street and told him to watch Clary sleep, he would be a stranger. I am perfectly familiar with Clary." Before Simon could speak again, Jace turned away to fetch the woman Simon was asking for—Simon's voice grated his ears, and the best way to avoid punching him out of sheer and unexplainable annoyance seemed to be distancing himself.

After walking less than a hundred paces through the house, Jace found himself in front of Clary's room, directly across from his own. He positioned his hand in a fist against the hardwood door before letting his knuckles ring against the door. There was a shuffling sound on the inside, that being followed by the sound of something dropping on the floor, but Jace waited with diminishing patience outside her door.

;

Clarissa Fray was wandering her unfamiliar room, looking for some form of clothing to cover herself with—the room wasn't cold, but she had stepped out of a warm shower only moments earlier, and was clad in only a towel that was too small to cover her well. The lime towel ran to the middle of her thigh, and though no one was watching her, she was scared that the towel would drop.

"Where the hell did they put my underwear?" Clary murmured, throwing open a few drawers to search for the missing garments. She found nothing—instead, she heard a rapping at the door, and decided that it was safe to assume that it was her mother with the missing garments.

She opened her door, taking a few moments up to look at who had knocked. Her eyes met gold—most definitely not her mother's—and Clary screamed, spinning away from the door and looking for somewhere to hide. "Get out." She demanded, her voice surprisingly firm for how quickly her heart was beating.

"Usually, when someone knocks on the door, you wait until you're fully clothed to answer it—unless, of course, this is your way of trying to seduce me. I have to say, this is impressive—I've had plenty of women throw themselves at me, but this is one of the more unique attempts."

"Get. Out." Clary hissed.

"I mean, if you wanted to sleep with me, you could have simply asked." Jace continued, ignoring Clary's glare. "I'd be more than pleased to help you explore—"

"GET OUT." Clary threw a shirt at him—somehow, she had not thought of putting it on—and tried to push him out the door, ignoring the fact that her scream had most likely attracted the attention of most the residents of the house. A peal of laughter came from Jace, and her eyes narrowed into a glare, harder than the glare she had been giving him before.

"I have an important message to deliver you." He bent down, picking up an orange bra from where they had been stacked on the dresser and tossing it to Clary. She quickly plucked the garment from the air, her glare not dimming.

"Don't touch my underwear." Jace only gave her a coy glance, she she sent him away before he could present her some flirtatious comment. "Go into my bathroom while I change." He laughed softly before sending himself to the bathroom and locking the door. Clary sighed upon hearing the click and locked her bedroom door.

"Don't you want to hear about why I'm here?" Jace asked. Clary dropped her towel, struggling to plaster the bra onto her sticking skin. Out of habit, she nodded yes, and found a pair of underwear to slip into.

"That would be nice." Clary said, projecting her voice so that he would be able to hear her through the closed door. She found a grey sweatpants and slipped into them, nearly tripping over the legs, and pulled herself into a blue tank top, the straps resembling spaghetti (though she had no clue why they were called 'spaghetti straps'). "And you can come out now."

"Thank God," Jace opened the door quickly, placing himself down on her bed in a position that Clary thought to be suggestive. "And Simon wishes to kiss you one last time before he is shipped off to the cold embrace of New York City without a beautiful redhead to pine over." Clary gave Jace a strange look, but he continued with his strangely dramatic speech, "Alas, Simon Cowell will have to spend a moment realizing that distance makes the heart grow fonder, and he will only fall more deeply in love with you due to the wedge in your hearts placed by distance."

"You're strange," Clary murmured. "His name is Lewis, not Cowell, and he's my best friend. He isn't in love with me—you're just an idiot."

"And that assumption makes you the idiot. Haven't you ever been in love, or had someone fall for you?" Clary shook her head, wet curls plastering to her cheeks. "Then, I'm sure you've at least seen one of those awful movies about the boy who falls for his best friend, usually one that is female. It's romantically disgusting."

"I don't watch those kind of films—I'll assume that you would have more expertise in the Department of Bad Movies."

"I'll have you know, I have a degree in Being Forced To Watch Chick Flicks By An Overly Emotional Yet Hot Girlfriend." Clary couldn't help but laugh at the unnecessarily long title, "So, I'll give you a run up of the plot. A man and woman have been friends since they were young. The guy falls for the girl, and the girl begins to develop feelings for her best friend, but she can't act on it because she is in an unfulfilling relationship, and for some reason is unable to dump her boyfriend. Add in some sweet moments, toss in the boyfriend being revealed to be a giant shitclown, mix in the best friend coming in and saving the girl from her awful boyfriend, have the girl realize that she and the best friend were meant to be, and you have a chick flick."

Clary laughed, disappearing into the bathroom for a moment before reappearing with a comb, sitting on her bed. She made sure there were a few feet of distance between herself and Jace before tugging the comb through her hair, "And you think that that's how it's going to be for myself and Simon?"

"Sad to say, your life is not a revolting romance movie, Clarissa Fray. You were meant to fall in love with a mousy boy with glasses twice the size of his face, but your world turned around when you were shot, and laid eyes upon a man too beautiful to be human. You fell in love with him, moved to this God-awful city, and completely forgot about the assburger you were supposed to be with."

"Shitclown? Assburger? Are you just taking random expletives and adding them to common nouns?" Clary laughed.

Jace ignored her comment, "Meanwhile, Simon decided that he could not take your presence any longer, and changed his name to Cowell and became the most hated judge on American Idol, taking out his anger from my beauty on the awful hopefuls of America."

"There's already an ex-American Idol judge named Simon Cowell. Will my best friend become Simon 2.0?" Clary pulled herself off of the bed, the conversation about Simon reminding her that it was time to say goodbye to him. She contemplated asking him to say, but she was sure that he would try (and fail) at injuring Jace if he stayed with him.

"If you add a negative to the end of the 2.0, then possibly." Jace followed her, stepping over the towel that she had left on the floor. "Clarissa, I'm ashamed to be guarding a girl who does not seem to possess the simple ability to hang her towels on a rack after using them."

"You were in the bathroom," She called out behind her, not bothering to chastise him for using her full forename. "Was I expected to march in and remove my towel for you so that I could place it neatly upon a rack?"

"Your idea, not mine." Jace followed Clary down the stairs, walking more slowly so that he could avoid seeing Clary say goodbye to Simon—it was illogical, but Jace's feelings towards the boy ran closely to hate. He knew there was nothing truly wrong with the boy, but it was jealousy in its purest form, so crystalline that he could not dissect the emotion for what it truly was.

Instead, he checked his phone, and found an impatient message from Isabelle. Jace grinned—the girl was almost as impatient as he—and played the message, holding his phone slightly away from his ear.

"Jace, where the hell are you? I told Alec to pick me up an hour ago and bring me to the goddamned street, but you boys most obviously forgot about me." There was static at the other end, and Jace strained to hear his friend, "I had to hitchhike with some stranger, and he dropped me off blocks away after asking me if I was in the mood from a 'good time'—who the hell wants a good time with a middle-aged old man who likes picking up strangers in his car?"

There was more to the message, but it was cut off by an incoming phone call: Izzy. Finishing his long journey down the stairs and glancing at the friends, Jace took the call, motioning Alec over and mouthing the word 'Isabelle'. "Speak of the devil." Jace greeted.

"Goddamn, Jonathan Christopher." Isabelle answered, obviously pissed by her use of his full first and middle name. A grin spread over Jace's face, dimming slightly when she saw Clary laugh at something Simon said and hit his arm playfully.

"Good day to you two, Isabelle Sophia. You sound peachy."

"The doorbell doesn't work."

"Pardon?" Jace asked, putting the phone on speaker when Alec finally came around. "I was expecting something along the lines of—"

"Your doorbell doesn't work. It's cold out here, Jace. Open the goddamned door—or, I can break it down, and you can try to protect your little friend with a busted down door." Jace laughed, and it was Clary's turn to look at Jace.

"What is it?" Clary asked, immediately assuming that it was her mother. The assumption didn't make too much sense—Jocelyn was at some nearby market to stock Clary's cabinets with an abundance of food—and Clary found herself wishing that she had simply stayed quiet.

"It's Isabelle," Jace said, taking his time to walk over to the door—he knew that Isabelle could hear him over the phone, and found it always amusing to deal with a livid Isabelle. "She'll be resided here along with myself and Alec, but she will not accompany you out of the house as I will."

"I thought that was Alec's job."

"What if Alec wishes to go out? He can't stay trapped here forever, so he might as well have his little sister as backup." The door shook with the knocks of an angry door, and Simon pushed past Jace to open the door instead, annoyed by Jace's conversation with Clary.

"You're a dick, Jace." Isabelle said, skipping past a hello. Jace laughed softly, letting the drenched girl hit his arm hard and mutter that she would kill him in his sleep, ignoring the fact that Clary and Simon were staring at the vixen.

Isabelle Lightwood was unlike anyone Clary had seen before: beautiful, coy, and deadly. She moved with some air of confidence, and was clad in black jeans, black heels, and a black tank top—the clothing made the tall girl look even taller, and drew attention to her straight hair, dark as night. She reminded Clary a bit of Snow White—skin white as snow, hair black as night, and lips red as blood—and had a presence that commanded the attention of everyone in the room.

"Good to see you, Izzy." A flash of white teeth came from Jace, but unlike Clary, Isabelle didn't seemed to be phased by the easy smile of the attractive boy. Maybe she was used to it, or maybe she had avoided the attraction that Clary attained for Jace.

"Who're you?" Izzy turned to look at Simon, her dark eyes sweeping over his features for a brief moment before landing on his face, offering him a smile that Clary was sure was flirtatious. Clary rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Are you her brother?"

"He's my best friend, and no, he is not here to stay." Clary answered for Simon, and Isabelle looked to Clary as though she had just noticed her. She looked over Clary not half as long as she had looked at Simon, her eyes dismissive.

"Shame—I could use someone to look at who isn't my brother or his asshole of a best friend." Jace bowed gallantly at the insult, a smile bright on his face, "Jace is fun to look at, but listening to the non-stop flow of sarcasm that comes from him can get to be more than a little tedious."

"That's hardly fair—I'm only sarcastic on days that end with a _y_."

Isabelle gave him a look telling him that his comment only proved her point, "So, Simon. You're a New Yorker?" He nodded, unable to keep his eyes off of her. Clary struggled to keep from glaring at Isabelle, "I'll walk you out, but tell me about New York. I've only been there once, but I hear it's amazing." She pulled her soaked leather jacket off gracefully, handing it to her older brother, Clary wondered slightly how she could take a move so simple as taking off a jacket and put so much grace into it.

"O-okay." Simon hugged Clary for only half of a moment, kissing her on the cheek. The move was strange—he had never tried to kiss her _anywhere_ before—and Clary wasn't so sure that she liked it.

"Plot twist: the nerdy boy instead falls for the temptress of a FBI agent, and proceeds to let her rip his heart out and stomp all over the pieces." Jace walked over to Clary as soon as the door closed. Clary was too busy glaring at the closed door to respond to Jace's small joke, but eventually lifted her head to look at the attractive man.

"'Stomp all over the pieces?'" Clary quoted back to him, a frown coming onto her face.

"Isabelle isn't truly interested in your little friend, Clarissa. She's interested of the chase of making a gullible boy fall for her, and a master in the Art of Breaking Hearts." This time, Clary didn't laugh at his joke. She remained staring at the door, questions about the girl in leather and red lipstick swarming her mind.

;

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**Secondary Notes: **This is completely random but story time:

Last Halloween, I dressed as _Isabelle Lightwood_ (partially because I'm tall and have black hair) and after I told my friend Josh that I was a shadowhunter he asked me why I had shadowhunters on my boobs (actually a rune of angelic power on my chest).

Another guy asked if I was dressed as a prostitute c:

Question of the day:

**Who do you imagine as Jace?** I think that Jamie's on-screen interaction with Lily was amazing, but visually, I imagine Jace (and for this fic) as **Alex Pettyfer** back when he was blonde.

feed the box below c:


	7. 07

**Notes: **Almost to a hundred—thank you for the reviews! I'm half addicted to writing this c:

There are mentions of **Jace's father** in this chapter (he's an original character, but also based off of Valentine). He's (if I may be so blunt) a complete, life-ruining asshole, so don't be too excited for Jace's 'loving' father being introduced.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own "The Mortal Instruments", or any other brands/franchises mentioned that are already in existence (there's one mention of a Patagonia jacket, but that's only because they have suitable jackets for winter, and I'm going through a phase of their clothing).

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When Clary's green eyes opened for the first time that morning, they were immediately pushed shut by the pain of the light streaming through the open windows. The shock of the light roused her slightly, but she was still too tired to do anything but moan, shut her eyes tightly, and burry her face into the pillow. Something about the lights confused her—she had closed the blinds that night, and was fairly sure that they would not open by themselves.

A paranoid thought of the killer being in her room spiked through her mind, and she choked against her pillow. She spiked herself upwards, but her jerking motion caused her to ram into a body close to hers, and this time she did scream. Her quiet scream was paused by an annoyed growl, and someone placed their hand over her mouth and pressed her back down against the bed in some idiotic attempt to quiet her. She buckled upwards against the hand, the tangled fan of scarlet hair over her face shielding her from seeing exactly who her attacker was.

"Do you shriek after waking up every morning, or only on Wednesdays?" Even if the voice hadn't familiar, she would have recognized who it was by the sarcasm packed into the sentence, and the obvious annoyance over something that was completely his fault (or what Clary pegged to be his fault).

"Do you wake every girl up by throwing open their blinds, gagging them, and throwing them down on their bed, or only redheads?" She shot back, pulling herself away from him. She ran her pale hands through her flaming hair, her fingers only making it two inches into her hair before getting caught in a cluster of sleep-ridden tangles.

"Clearly, you've never been gagged before. Usually, gently placing a hand to the mouth of an unreasonably screaming girl to quiet her is called logic, not gagging and 'throwing down on the bed'. I've thrown plenty of women down on beds, and that's most usually not the procedure." Clary scowled.

"It's too early in the morning for this. Why are you here, anyways?" Clary slid off of her bed, grabbing a toothbrush and plastering it with the paste—the brand she detested—and running it through her mouth. She sat in a position on the bathroom counter that she could see Jace in, a small frown still covering her face. _He promised that he wouldn't watch me sleep_, she thought to herself.

"Watching you sleep," His comment mirrored her thoughts, and she gave him an alarmed look. "Come on, Clarissa. Don't think so lowly of me. I'm here because I thought it would be best to usher you around this old-folk home, and help you practice playing the part of my girlfriend."

Clary raised her eyebrows silently, not removing the toothbrush from her mouth so that he would be forced to elaborate. He laid back on her bed, closing his golden eyes and propping his hands behind his head in a way that made him more alluring. It was annoying—he was already too attractive for his own good, and anything he did to emphasize his physical features (in this case his muscled arms) was good as a crime.

"Do you want our new neighbors to think we spent the first day together as a couple locked inside all day, having sex on just about every surface?" This made Clary spit her toothpaste out into the sink, and she treated him with a stone glare that made him laugh.

"There's more people than you believe who refrain from thinking of sex at every waking—and sleeping—moment of each day." Clary said coldly, but a hot blush still flared on her cheeks. The redness in her cheeks made it a bit more difficult to glare at him, and she could see him trying to keep himself from laughing at her again.

"The average person thinks of sex eighteen time every second. Or something like that." Jace said dismissively.

"I think once every eighteen seconds is the more reasonable theory." Clary stated, and Jace scoffed. He rolled his eyes—he obviously detested being wrong—and the redhead tried not to laugh.

Clary stepped out of the bathroom, scanning the room with bright eyes before letting them settle on a pile of casual clothes, still in the boxes. She reached into the boxes for a few moments before pulling away underwear, jeans, a thin top, and a Patagonia jacket.

"The bathroom is pretty far away, Clary. If you want, you can change here—I won't mind." Clary pulled a dense sweater out of the bag and whipped it at his head, his duck causing it to only skim his wavy hair.

"I think I'm all right," Clary shut the bathroom door and locked it, stripping down quickly, "So where are you taking me?"

Jace chuckled, not moving from his lying position on her bed. The sheets smelled too clean—Jocelyn had obviously cleaned them the day before—and he wrinkled his nose, wondering how anyone could sleep with the pungent smell of soap irritating their nose. His eyes wandered to the closed door that he knew Clary was changing behind, unwanted thoughts flickering past his mind of Clary with her long legs and wide eyes. Gritting his teeth, he turned his head away from the bathroom—the thoughts were distracting, and with a man trying to kill Clary, the last thing he wanted was to be distracted by thoughts of sleeping with her.

"I don't know. Ask Alec." Jace said, his voice harder than it was before. He knew that he most likely seemed bipolar—amused one moment, glaring at the ceiling the next—but his emotions always got the better of him, and that fact only brought angry emotions at the emotions for being present. It was a strange, twisted complex—he had been taught that emotions were weakness, and the only emotion a man should have was anger.

Anger—though present in him almost constantly—was one of the emotions that he hated the most. Anger made him blind, and the rage made him feel like some sort of animal.

When he was livid, he was unable to think—his mind often clouded with rage, and when he was set off, there was little stopping him from knocking a man's teeth out. The uncontrollable anger did not occur often, but when it came, it only reminded him of his father, and the thought of being anything alike to his bastard of a father made him want to punch a hole through the wall.

Just as the images of his father and his belt started in Jace's mind, the door opened, and Jace welcomed the distraction of the redheaded girl with open arms. Distractions were nice—they helped him push his demons away for a moment.

"Are you all right?" Clary asked.

"I'm fine." Jace's voice was hard, and Clary took a few steps closer—she was like a moth drawn to the angry flame in his eyes. She knew that when a person spoke in that way, it was best to simply back away, but she could not do that—maybe it was idiocy, maybe kindness, but she wasn't the type of person to back away from someone in such a state.

"Jace, I—"

"I'm fine, Clary." Jace's voice was dangerous, his tone low. He took a step away from her—he didn't trust himself in a mood like that, and was terrified of striking her in blind rage—and found himself running into her bed. He felt trapped—cornered—he was unable to move closer for fear of taking out his rage on the easiest subject, and was unable to move further away with the obstacle of the bed.

"You said that already." Clary again moved closer, and Jace couldn't help but think that she was half mad—if not, simply an idiot—for moving closer. To him, any sane person would leave him alone.

"Get away from me, Clary." Jace said, his voice dangerous, but a cautious undertone was embedded in the lethal words. His gold eyes flashed once, but she didn't move away—instead, she tilted her head up to look him squarely in the eyes, her face softening with something. What? Sympathy? He growled, his eyes narrowing, "Move, Clary."

"I'm not scared of you, Jace." Her voice was softer than had been before, and it made him want to tear his hair out—she was talking to him as though he wasn't a grenade about to explode. He grit his teeth—he did not want her to be caught in the aftermath of the explosion—and let his eyes dart around her, looking for an escape."

"I'm not fucking around, Clary." Jace's gaze wavered for a moment, and he tried to control his breathing in some way, but it was difficult to calm himself down when she was so close to him. He was afraid, and the fear of hurting her turned into anger over his father, a father who made him into something of a beast, unable to control even simple emotions.

The moment his father crossed his mind, he snapped, "I don't need you to treat me like I'm a child, Clarissa. I'm a grown man. It's my job to protect you from a bullet, but it sure as hell isn't your job to treat me as though I'm not a grenade." His voice was cold and low, cracking through the thin air like a whip, but there was some undertone of sadness in his voice.

And Clary understood.

He was afraid of letting people come close to him because _something_ happened to him, something that terrified him of people he trusted and something that made him (as he so gently put it) a grenade. Her mind was whirring to life, but she didn't have a chance to call out to him, and tell him what was floating around the walls of her mind—he had already pushed past her, slamming the door behind him and leaving Clary in a daze.

;

"Jace?"

Jace was sitting on the couch, staring intently at a plain wall, and drowning in his unspoken thoughts. He felt as though he was being pushed down into a pool, and every time he reached up for air, he was slammed back down into the water to drown again. He couldn't breathe—all he could think of was a mixture of his father and Clary, and why he had been so afraid to hurt her, or why the thought of taking out his misplaced anger on her even crossed his mind.

The voice came in the midst of his drowning, and it took him a long few moments to look up to find Alec watching him, some concern in his crystal eyes. Jace glared at his friend as he approached, "I'm not in the mood for a chat, Alec."

"Too bad. You're talking." The words were surprisingly firm for Alec, and the alien tone in Alec's voice was enough to convince Jace to stay seated. Alec sat down, some interrogation fresh in his eyes, and Jace regretted his decision to stay before the first scolding passed Alec's lips. "You look like you're guilty."

"Guilty?" Jace repeated, shaking his head no. "Guilty of what? If I didn't do anything wrong, then I have nothing to feel guilt for."

"Then you're guilty about your thoughts. What you could have done. What you wanted to do." By the look on Alec's face, it was obvious that he didn't know what he was getting at. "What you were capable of doing."

"And what, Alexander, do you believe that I am capable of doing? What did I want to do? What could I have done?" Jace questioned back, a sly smile crawling onto his lips when he saw Alec's pondering look. Believing that it was enough to distract Alec, he stood up, but was immediately tugged down by Alec.

"What the hell happened, Jace? Little Red looks like she just ate a sour lemon, and you're glaring at the wall as though the paint just choked your father." Isabelle walked in, draping her long legs over the arms of a parallel chair. Jace's face twisted into a scowl at the mention of the word 'father', and Isabelle winced, knowing she had struck a cord in Jace that was best left alone.

"Is this about _him_?" Isabelle asked bluntly, watching Jace's face twist. Alec winced, shifting away from Jace as though expecting him to explode at the brief mention of the man who raised Jace.

"Who is 'him'? Jesus Christ? Yes, Izzy. This is about Jesus. The goddamned reason that I nearly punched a defenseless girl in the face is because I was mad at myself for forgetting to pray this morning. Ah, damn. Now He won't reincarnate me into a flower." Jace said in a hard tone, not quite caring that he was blending his religions with reincarnation.

"Don't play stupid, Jonathan." Isabelle snapped. When she was annoyed with the man, she often slid back into her old habit of calling him Jonathan, something that made him scowl. "You don't think I'm talking about Jesus—you know damn well I'm talking about your dad."

"And you know," Jace hissed, his golden eyes narrowing, "That I'm not in the mood to talk about him. If you want a nice conversation about the jackass, come and talk to me the day that a bullet is put through his skull."

"You haven't seen him in five years, Jace. There's a good chance that you never will again, so stop wasting your time thinking about an asshole who isn't worth your time and try to work on controlling your anger." Isabelle snapped, her syrup eyes narrowed. Her position was still the same as before, but she looked ready to stand up and hit some sense into Jace.

"Oh, I apologize, Isabelle. You're right. I mean, if I had a constant reminder of him—something like a scar on my goddamned lip from his belt—my hatred would be justified, but I suppose I'm just being petty." Isabelle's eyes flickered to Jace's lower lip, straining to see the white scar—she had seen it before, but assumed it was from FBI training—and swallowed back her second argument.

"What if the odds are against you, and you run into Duncan again?" Alec said, deciding it best to not refer to Duncan as Jace's father.

"I'm not a child, Alec. I'm not scared that he's going to hit me—I'm stronger now. I'd be able to fight him off now, and he knows that I'm a grown man." Jace stood up, not wanting to hear Alec's and Isabelle's words turn into some form of sympathy. He didn't want an apology from them—they were not the ones that turned him into a beast, not the ones that hit him every night, not the ones that liked to use their belts as weapons—and he didn't need them to say they were sorry for a crime they did not commit.

After a few minutes of recollecting and wandering the house, Jace led Clary out of the house. He told her shortly that he wanted to talk to her, and familiarize the both of them to Portsmouth. She was confused by the sudden change in his mood, but obliged, and later found herself sitting in the passenger seat of his car. They were blanketed in silence.

"How did you meet Isabelle?" Clary asked. They had been driving in silence for ten minutes, and though she had been aching to break the silence, she hadn't been expecting to so blatantly ask him about the vixen.

"School," Jace said simply, switching lanes too quickly. Clary was slammed back against the seat, and she treated him with a glare. "Sorry. The driver in front of us is drunk—look closely at the way he swerves."

Clary strained her eyes to see, but even then, it was hard to tell that the driver was intoxicated, "How did you notice that? Or, just . . . everything like that?" He gave her a curious look, "The little things."

Jace laughed, "The little things?" He repeated, then shrugged his shoulders. "It's just something I've picked up over time. I've learned how to do it—if you aren't observant in this line of work, you're dead. Harsh, but true." Clary nodded slightly, leaning back against the car seat.

"Your car isn't very comfortable—I feel like I'm sitting at an acute angle." She said, using her lessons in angle measures for the only thing that she thought geometry to be useful for (metaphors). Jace simply pressed an obviously placed button down, adjusting the seat so that she was now leaning much too far back. She frowned, "That's very helpful."

"Alec usually sits there. He likes to be alert while I'm driving—you know, so someone doesn't crash into us or grabs a gun and shoot at us."

"You're kidding." Jace deadpanned, and Clary raised an eyebrow. "Is getting shot at a daily thing for you, or are you both overly cautious about every aspect of your life?"

"A little bit of both." Jace decided, switching lanes to exit the main road. He was quiet for a moment as he drove into the parking lot of a small mall—much smaller than they were in new York—before continuing to speak, "I've been shot at while driving before, so it would not be so much of a surprise if it happens again. And even if the scenario never again occurs, it's always better to be prepared than dead."

The car stopped without so much as a jolt—something Clary had tried so hard at perfecting, always failing—and Jace slipped out of the car, crossing over to her side. He opened the door in a gentlemanly fashion she did not expect, and waited as she stepped out of the car, trying not to trip over the door on her way out. "Where are we?"

Jace shut the door behind her and locked it. "We're getting burgers at somewhere my phone told me was the best fast food place in Portsmouth. But, this town is a quarter of a mile wide and chock full of elderly people, so I wouldn't trust that rating too much." Clary laughed at his stereotype, walking after him as he led her to the burger place. She contemplated lying to him and saying she was a vegetarian just to annoy for a moment, but was too hungry to stall him for even a moment.

The burger place was called _The Cowboy Beef_, a title that made Jace laugh and Clary wrinkle her nose. Before even walking in, she had a bad feeling about _The Cowboy Beef_, but kept her judgment to herself.

ace didn't bother asking Clary what she wanted—the menu consisted of nearly identical meals with different condiments and names—and told her to find a booth with no screaming kids nearby. Clary did as told, and they ended up sitting down by two seats that were much too close to the restroom—the smell wasn't too pungent, but staring at a bathroom was not the way she wanted to start off her first meal in Rhode Island.

"Here we have it," Jace said grandly, "The best burgers in Portsmouth. Savor this moment—you may never eat at the best burger place in a new town again." Clary rolled her eyes, and he slid her a cardboard tray with a thick burger and fries mixed in it. She worked at plucking the fries out of her burger—the cheese had woven them into the meal itself—while Jace began to eat, finishing half his meal before Clary could finish cleaning hers.

They ate without much speaking—Clary was still curious as to his previous outburst, and Jace was still trying to avoid the topic—and had to edge their way around meaningless small talk. They were saved by Jace's phone ringing, and he picked it up gratefully.

"Miss me already, Alec? I have to say—" Jace was interrupted by a confused Alec on the other end, speaking in a way that was almost frantic that made Jace's stomach turn.

"Come to the house, _now_. There's—there's a note for Clary."

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**Secondary Notes:** There you have it: a cliffhanger, and the reveal that Jace had an abusive father (who is the reason Jace left home for military school).

And to answer a few questions, I have no updating schedule—I write when I have the time, read it over or get a beta, and submit it after school is done that day (three pm pacific time)

Question of the day:

**What is your favorite book (not including series)? **I love _The Fault In Our Stars_ by John Green and a million others that I'm blanking on (TFIOS came to mind because it's on my table)

feed the review box below ;3


	8. 08

**Disclaimer: **Disclaimed.

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;

_Always eyes watching you_

_and the voice enveloping you. _

_Asleep or awake, _

_indoors or out of doors,_

_in the bath or bed —_

_no escape_

_X._

"What the hell is this supposed to mean?" Jace growled, his golden eyes going over the note several times before speaking—he didn't want to miss an aspect of the vaguely familiar words ringing through his ears. The little redhead peered over his shoulder, and he handed the card-shaped note to Clary, "It isn't a love letter, Clarissa, so don't get your hopes up."

He turned to look at Alec and Isabelle, but his best friend only looked as puzzled as he did, and Isabelle was busying herself in playing with her phone. Jace frowned, looking to Isabelle's phone to see what she was so intrigued by, "It's George Orwell." She said suddenly, sliding the device back into her pocket.

"Unless the man who shot Clary and left the note was a journalist who died fifty years ago, that information helps in no way." Jace replied, and Isabelle rolled her eyes, giving him a look that told him that she thought him an idiot.

"Idiot," She stated, mirroring his prediction, "It's something that he wrote in a random novel. 'X' just quoted him, and left a note for Clary."

"Is he serious?" Alec asked, and received a confused look from his sister, "About always watching Clary. In the shower. And in bed. And while she sleeps." He elaborated, and the redhead cringed, "But it could be a metaphor—I'm sure that someone was trying to leave that note for an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend to scare them. They might've gotten the wrong address."

"I haven't met very many of your ex-girlfriends, but I'm fairly sure that none of them have left notes claiming to watch you while you bathe. Hell, I've slept with more than a handful of possessive girls, and even the ones who memorized my address did nothing more than ring my doorbell and ask why I didn't love them." Isabelle laughed at Jace's comment shortly, but Clary still seemed uncomfortable. Jace plucked the note from in between her fingers, looking it over with careful eyes, "Did this come in an envelope? What was the mailing address?"

Isabelle shook her head, "No. It came folded like a triangle on the doormat—someone placed it here by hand. It wasn't mailed."

Jace swore underneath his breath, "He's here—the asshole is here. Or somewhere near here, or . . ." Jace's voice trailed away as he came to the conclusion that he knew nothing of the situation, and it pissed him off—he felt as though he always needed to be in some sort of control. The mystery behind Clary's shooting was spinning into a dark zone that he hated, and it was something that made him feel as though he was useless—how could he pride himself in doing his job right when he could hardly solve a simple puzzle?

"Jace—" Clary's voice rang through to him, but he held up a hand to quiet her. She frowned at his attempt to silence her, and continued to speak. "Can't you take it to some lab, and analyze the fingerprints to see who left it?"

"This isn't _CSI: Miami_." Jace murmured, rolling his golden eyes as though she had asked him how to hold a spoon. "It's a bit more complicated than you believe it is to get a scan of fingerprint data. Our prints would have contaminated the note by now, and even if the man who left this was idiotic enough to forgo gloves, it would be much too expensive."

"Little Red," Isabelle interrupted before Clary could answer. Isabelle held out a smooth hand impatiently, "Give me your phone." Clary handed the smart phone to the raven-haired girl without thinking—then again, she was unable to imagine that Isabelle would throw the phone on the ground and stab a hole through the screen with the heel of her seven-inch shoe.

"What the fuck, Izzy?" Jace asked, not quite caring that his language could make Clary uncomfortable—at the moment, he was more worried about Isabelle's mental health. Instead of answering, Isabelle stabbed the phone with her boot again. "Is this a new hobby of yours, or have you just completely lost it?"

Isabelle drove her heel into the phone a second time, seeming unconvinced that the pile of shattered glass and mechanics of the phone were broken. Seeming satisfied with two puncture wounds inside the expensive phone, she picked it up and pried the back off. Jace, Alec, and Clary watched her curiously as she did so, the blonde man still convinced that his friend had lost it.

"It has a tracking device." Isabelle pulled out a green chip and small string of wires from the back of the phone, looking at it with a wrinkled nose. "The asshole has a tracker on Clary—he knows where she has been, what she's been doing, and just about anything else a psychotic man could need to know about his target."

"So that justifies stabbing her phone with unnaturally sharp shoes?" Jace commented, taking the phone from Isabelle. The shattered glass cut his fingers slightly, but he seemed oblivious to the small pain of the broken glass. He pressed the home button of the iPhone, ignoring the fact that a phone with a hole clean through the center had no chance of turning on.

"I don't know how to remove the backside." Isabelle shrugged, and Alec laughed. Clary only treated Isabelle with a glare, trying not to roll her eyes at the girl who had shattered her cell phone.

"I'm fairly sure you'll have to pay for that, Izzy." Jace grinned, and Isabelle scowled.

Clary watched the exchange between the two with curious eyes—she still wasn't firm on the assumption that Jace and Isabelle had nothing between them. How could they not? Jace was sexy, and Isabelle was as beautiful as they came. Blonde and black: they were perfect together, down to the hair on their head. They clashed beautifully, but they were similar in the way that they were both perfect specimen of both kinds. Isabelle with her grace, Jace with his stealth—their perfections matched.

And when Clary thought about herself, she could not think of one thing about her that was extraordinary—that is, other than her flaming mass of tangled hair and shockingly green eyes. The green orbs were always strange to her. She thought that her eyes were too green, so green that they nearly had a glowing sheen when it was close to darkness.

She didn't have a clue that some people—Jace especially—thought that strange was beautiful, and the things in life that strayed from the norm were things to cherish.

Her train of thought was interrupted by a warm hand on her shoulder, one followed up by a prick of electricity that nearly made her jerk away from the source of the heat. "You in there, Clary?" Jace asked.

"What?" Clary asked—the word 'what' was always an automatic response to someone suddenly speaking to her. It didn't matter whether or not she had heard them—she had trouble processing the statement until she questioned them about the statement. "Yeah, I am. Just thinking."

"It's nothing to worry about." He said quietly, and it took her a moment to realize that he was still talking about the note. Clary shook her head—not to say 'no', just a random dismissal—and plucked the note from Alec's cold fingers.

The redheaded girl read the note over for a third time, trying to let the shock she had not yet fully registered disintegrate in her mind. "_Always the eyes watching you_. What does that mean? That he watches me . . . watches me undress, and shower, and sleep, and—" She was cut off by Jace gripping her shoulder more firmly, shaking his head no.

"He couldn't be. Even if he knew we were here, this house has not emptied itself since we arrived here. He's trying to scare you, trying to lure you into some state of shock that would send you running home." The blonde boy didn't meet her eyes as he spoke.

"How do you know that?" Isabelle asked bluntly. The words were thoughts flying among all of their minds, but no one had the courage to voice them. "What if he could hear Clary? What if he knew where she was before, and put cameras in the house before Alec and everyone else arrived?"

"Then we're checking the house." Jace said flatly, "Disable any cameras you find. If you find something, and you don't know whether or not it is a camera, dismantle it." His golden eyes flickered to the brother and sister duo, "Now."

Alec and Isabelle emptied themselves inside of the house (though Clary believed it was more for the sake of escaping her), leaving her alone with Jace. The green-eyed girl offered him a weak smile, handing him the note—she didn't want to touch it. It made her feel unclean.

"What now?" She asked quietly as Jace glared at the wall. _Check off 'finding enjoyment in glaring at inanimate objects' off the list of things that makes us similar_, she mused to herself. He picked up his head, looking at her through half-lidded eyes.

The tired look made him look somehow sexier—his hair fell in his tired golden eyes in a sweep of cascading waves. He closed his eyes full for a moment, reaching a muscled arm upwards to brush the hair from his eyes, and the movement was enough to make Clary look away with flushed cheeks and nervous eyes.

"Now?" He asked, his voice gruff for a moment, "Ah, shit."

"Is something wrong?" Clary questioned.

"I didn't think of a plan for after Alec and Isabelle went on their scavenger hunt for a madman's hidden cameras." Clary cringed, and Jace's look was slightly apologetic, "I suppose that now, a viable option is going out somewhere—until the house is marked as clear, I don't want you inside of it."

"I'm not a child, Jace. If he's been watching me, he can watch me sit on the couch and text Simon." She was about to say more, but paused after thinking of her shattered phone, "Or . . . find a computer and try to email Mom about why I won't be able to answer her phone calls for the time being."

"Then let's buy you a new phone." Jace said, seeming happy for a good excuse to tear her away from resting inside the house. Though she was afraid, she was tired already, and wanted nothing more than to curl up on the couch and sleep.

"I'm going to sleep in your car." Clary stated, already going towards his car. She heard a low chuckle come from Jace, and began tugging at the opening of the car, "It's unlocked. How does this open?"

He laid a hand on hers, fingers lining with her wispy ones perfectly, and she let out a small shiver of air. He then proceeded to curl his hand around hers—hers still on the handle of the car—and molded his way to helping her unlatch a button. "There's a child lock on it—it's pretty useless, since I don't have a kid, but it helps to keep idiots from ripping out the insides of my car."

"Are you calling me an idiot?" He answered with a short laugh, and soon didn't care whether or not he had insulted her—she desired sleep much too much, and fell into slumber within moments.

;

When Clary felt sleep's grip loosen on her, the first thing she felt was an incredibly warm pair of lips tickling her ear. For a moment, she ignored it—it was most likely a stranger dream—and stubbornly kept her eyes closed, but bolted upwards and screamed when the lips moved into a sentence.

"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty." Her scream came a few moments before he could remove his lips from her ear, and he cringed, "Now I'm certain—you wake up screaming every morning. Sex dreams, perhaps?"

Clary glared at him. "I suppose you go around telling women that you can make them scream in five seconds as a pickup line, and pray to God that they don't toss their margarita in your eyes?"

"It's more than a pickup line, Clarissa. And I don't need childish pickup lines off of Valentine's Day cards to bed a woman—a simple glance is all I need, and they come running." He winked at her, and she rolled her eyes.

"What kind of Valentine's Day cards do you get? I'm no expert on the holiday, but I've never seen one that says 'Baby, I'm just like tennis. Give me a shot, and I'll make you moan.'" She said, lowering her voice an octave to badly imitate his voice. He laughed—a real laugh, not the half-amused chuckle he always uttered—and shook his head no.

"What kind of tennis do you play?" He asked, repeating a variation of her question to him. "Because I'd love to play a round of that with you."

Clary restrained her laughter, letting her eyes wander the parking lot. "Is there an Apple store around here, or did you just drag me here to kill me?"

"The latter," He said, his face serious for a moment, "If I wanted to kill you, I would have much sooner. An example being letting that car hit you." Clary frowned, wondering if he was planning on letting that go in the future.

The thoughts of the car incident brought thoughts of him on top of her, making Clary redden. The thoughts filtered into those of how warm his body heat was, and how hot his lips were against her ear only moments ago. She looked over to Jace, and the sudden urge to reach for him, bring him down to her height, and let her lips cover his was almost overwhelming.

Clary blinked and looked away from him, making sure that the thoughts were completely drained from her mind before looking back to him. He gave her a curious look, but stayed silent, "Come on, Clarissa. You can pick from all the iPhones in the rainbow."

He waited for her to walk in step with him before stringing an arm around her small waist. She cringed, giving him a concerned look, and he shrugged his shoulders lightly, "We're madly in love, Clarissa. Now tell me, what are some cute nicknames I can give to you to make everyone around us simultaneously puke and think we're in the honeymoon phase of our relationship."

Clary sighed, settling into his muscled arm slightly. He liked the way she fit into him—she was small and soft, and he was made of lean muscle. The indent of her waist was a comfortable resting place for his arm, and he unconsciously pulled her closer when a stranger passed by them.

Jace could tell that she was uncomfortable, and her discomfort only increased when the salesman at the Apple Store asked them how long they had been together. The man—'Jon' on his name tag—smiled as they heard Jace's story of how the two ran into each other in the hospital, fell in love, and moved to Portsmouth to start a life away from the drama of home. Jon commented on how the story was like the tragic tale of _Romeo and Juliet_ (but with a happy ending, he added hastily) and Clary forced a plastic smile.

Jace frowned at her obvious discomfort, making a mental note to remind Clary how to act in a relationship. After admitting that she was a virgin, Jace could assume that she had little dating experience, but this was ridiculous—she acted as though touching Jace was like petting an eel, and speaking of their 'relationship' was like chewing on wood chips.

"Stop eating wood chips, Strawberry," Jace voiced, and Clary looked at him as though he had grown an extra arm and slapped her with it. The look was well deserved—the thoughts and analogy was painfully random—but the salesman only smiled, assuming it was an inside joke, or a sort of sexual innuendo.

"I'm trying, Goldilocks." She replied, trying at giving him a sweet nickname and failing miserably. This evoked a strange glance from the salesman, and Jace had to restrain himself from groaning.

After a few more undeniably awkward exchanges and a purchase of a green phone, Jace ushered Clary out of the store, kissing her on her temple for good measure. Her cheeks flared at the brush of his warm lips, and she let her hair fall forwards to cover her hot cheeks.

After a few annoyed murmurs from Jace about how she needed relationship lessons from Isabelle, he called Alec to see if the house was cleared. After asking how the house was, Jace paused for a moment. He licked his lips as a buzzing came from the other end—Clary could only catch the word 'activate'—and creased his golden eyebrows into half of a frown. Clary gave him a concerned look, mouthing _'what happened'_ to Jace, but he simply put a finger to his lips and continued to listen.

After a few moments of torture, Jace hung up, "What did he say? Is it—"

"No, it isn't safe. And he wants me to check out one of the cameras." He said, licking his lips again, and Clary gave him a concerned look, "He thinks that the one in your bedroom is a bomb, and has a high chance of detonating once tampered with."

;

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**Notes: **Sorry for another cliffhanger, and I'm especially sorry because the next update may be slower—I have a load of writing to catch up on, and have been procrastinating on finishing other works.

My unfinished work is all onexshots for fanfiction. I have a _Percy Jackson and the Olympians_ Valentine's Day exchange fic, a _Clique_ Valentine's Day exchange fic, a _Hunger Games_ shot for GGE, an _American Horror Story_ shot for Coppertone War's monthly challenge, and another _The Mortal Instruments_ fic to possibly start. But I'm still dedicated to this fic, and I'm sure that I won't be gone—I'll be back with another chapter on Valentine's Day (hopefully) at the latest.

**also another important note:**

Should I reintroduce **Magnus Bane** in the next installment? If so, should there be a magnusalec scene? Please vote it out in the comments (say Magnus, malec, both, neither, either or (it's your choice)). The most popular vote will be placed in the next chapter, and if Magnus is chosen, I will have one or more scenes including him (and Alec if you choose so).

Question of the day:

**What is your high score on Flappy Bird? **I have forty one :c I reached sixty five on my friend's phone—my phone has a mirror-ish screen protecter, and I always get distracted if the light is too bright. If it is, I can see myself better than the stupid birds (why am I ranting about this here I'll go now bye).

leave a review c:


	9. 09

**Notes:** Here's the ninth chapter (ten days later than I tried to promise), but to make up for the slight delay, I added 1000 words to its usual length (this stands at _4,045_ words without notes).

**Magnus Bane** will be reintroduced in this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own "The Mortal Instruments".

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;

Clarissa Fray was sitting cross-legged on her bed, playing the part of a simple bored character—it was more brave to act unamused than it was to reveal that she was afraid that standing up straight wasn't an option for her at the moment. Nerves gave her weak knees, and she was sure as hell to afraid to stand up without falling—not with a mute camera and bomb in the room that she was supposed to call a temporary home, a sanctuary.

She dimly wondered if whoever had been watching her slumber liked what they saw, and if she was an amusing subject for his foul play.

For the last ten minutes, she had been zoning in and out of the conversation, but she wasn't getting much information from it—all she knew was that Jace was pissed off, Isabelle was confused, and Alec was completely silent. The silence from the raven-haired man was pissing Clary off—she was paranoid, and in her paranoia, she believed that he knew something that could end up hurting her.

The words were skimming past her ears, but she heard the words "trigger" and "detonate" more times than she was comfortable with. The three agents in the room didn't seem to notice the discomfort of the redheaded girl, and continued to speak hurriedly in some vague dialogue that was filled with too many allusions for her to keep up.

She tried to impatiently wait for them to shut up, but the blonde man noticed her discomfort quickly. Clary watched as he moved from where he was watching the camera to sit on the bed besides her, causing the bed to shift slightly with the added weight.

"I suppose you'd like me to give you a quick run-down," Jace said, and Clary nodded. "In simple terms, there's a camera in the left corner of the room. It records in black and white vague pictures, but it has no audio attached to it—not a clue why. We can't clip the wires—there's some kind of bomb attached to it—but we're hoping that someone can come and detonate it within the next few days."

"Few days?" Clary repeated, her voice rising a few octaves into half-hysteria. "How the hell are you so calm? Someone—someone who now is assuredly trying to kill me—has a camera in my bedroom. My _bedroom._ And you're speaking as though a goddamned butterfly flutters through my windows every night and eats my hair."

"I don't know—I'd be pretty concerned if a butterfly was eating my hair." Jace commented, and Clary rolled her eyes at the sarcastic boy. Isabelle murmured something along the lines of, _'Well, not everyone is...'_ and Jace shot her an easy smile.

"That's because you're an idiot, and more afraid of butterflies than you are of serial killers." Clary tried not to cringe at the phrase, but Isabelle didn't seem to notice her discomfort. "You can lounge around and soak in your terror of butterflies, but I'm going to call someone who can safely deactivate this bomb."

Isabelle walked out of the room with loud steps—her tall heels clipped against the ground—and Alec followed his younger sister out of the room. It wasn't a concealed fact that Alec didn't enjoy Clary too much, and he obviously liked spending as little time as possible with the redhead. She frowned, looking to Jace to see if he would follow the string of leaving detectives, but he stayed in his place on her bed.

"So, he can't hear us?" Clary asked. Jace lifted his head and looked to her, blinking his golden eyes at her in a way that made her stomach twist uncomfortably—something about the gold of his eyes always made her feel disoriented.

"Hmm? No, he can't. It's easy to identify as a simple camera, and he most likely didn't want to complicate the setup of the bomb with attaching a speaker."

"When will it blow up? Or, detonate?" Clary asked, the foreign word sounding twisted on her lips. It was obvious to even Jace that the way of speaking was foreign to her, and he chuckled softly.

"It isn't going to detonate at a pre-distinguished date. The way to detonate it is to cut the wires and detach the camera, but that would most likely kill whoever was clipping the wires, so we're stuck in a bit of a rut right now."

"Why would he do that? He obviously wanted—_wants_ me dead. What does it matter how I die?" Clary questioned, lying back on the too-soft comforter. She had always had trouble sleeping on the mattress—it was too downy for her, and she often woke in the middle of the night feeling like she was falling simply because the bed caved underneath her weight.

"I've never had the desire to kill, so I wouldn't know what kind of fucked up logic criminals have, but I believe that he may want the pleasure of killing you by his own hand."

"Have you?" Clary asked, and the strange look he gave her told her that the question was much too vague, "Killed anyone. I mean, not because you just woke up one morning and decided to shoot down a carnival, but because you had to."

Jace laid back on the bed as well, but he paused for quite a while before he finally gave her some kind of suitable response. She saw him open and close his mouth multiple times in a half-assed attempt to give her a yes or no, but he silenced himself each time his mouth opened so that he would not be able to say anything to her.

"I have." Jace finally said, and he shut his golden eyes for a moment, feeling a tight feeling wash over him. When he blinked his eyes open, a pair of jade eyes were focused on him. "But I can assure you that I never shot down a carnival." The attempt at sarcasm had only half of his heart in it, and he looked away from Clary—talking about killing people was lower on the list of his favorite activities.

"How many people?" Clary asked, pressing onto unwelcoming territory. Jace noticed that it was a habit of hers to do that—she liked pushing farther than she was allowed to push, but somehow, she always managed to get the results that she wanted. He wasn't sure if everyone was so weak to her big eyes, but he had trouble ignoring her.

"Four." Jace said, and Clary looked surprised. "What? Were you expecting me to be a mass murderer with the blood of fifty bodies on my hands?"

"No, but I was a bit out of the ballpark. My estimate was a two-digit number." Clary said quietly, and Jace tried to laugh softly.

She looked back over to Jace, but his eyes were in the left corner of the room. Clary followed his gaze to the video camera, and cringed when she saw it—how had she not noticed it? It wasn't very hidden.

The video camera was black, and a little bit bigger than half of a baseball would be. It stood out well enough against the cream colored walls—it did not look like a camera at first glance, but it looked like _something_, something that shouldn't have been overlooked so easily.

"What do you think he's thinking?" Jace asked quietly, looking over to Clary. She frowned slightly—to her, it was a strange question—and she snapped her gaze from the obvious camera to the attractive man lying next to her.

Clary didn't respond, but Jace didn't seem to need a response to put forth his opinion, "Because I think that he's jealous."

This caught Clary's attention, and she gave Jace a look that told him that she thought him to be insane. "Jealous? Why would he be jealous, of all things? Or are you really so full of yourself as to believe that every other man is jealous of your looks?" The blonde man laughed, and the teenage girl hit his arm, "I wasn't making a joke."

"That's what makes it funny." He replied plainly, a hint of a smile still playing across his face. Clary rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, avoiding his strong gaze. "And I think that he hates you, and there's always a whisper of love in true hate."

"I'm not following."

"He's jealous because he's watching you on a bed besides a devilishly handsome man—worlds more handsome than he could ever attempt to be—and he wants me dead, maybe as much as you. It doesn't matter if he wants you or now. You're with someone else, and he's jealous. For all we know, he could be Simon, and he's plotting to kill me and take you as a cute little slave to chain to his computer while he plays _Game of Thrones_." Jace remarked, and Clary decided against both defending her best friend and telling Jace that Game of Thrones was a book and television show, not a video game.

"Do you have to compliment yourself every time you reference yourself? You can describe yourself without using adjectives pertaining to your physical appearance." Jace laughed at her comment, and Clary was lost at the reason behind his amusement. She looked from the wall to the—though she hated to admit it to herself—handsome man, both of her eyebrows raised.

Jace raised a single eyebrow in reply, making Clary jealous again that she was not able to raise a single eyebrow in question. She liked raising her eyebrows—when she was young, her mother told her not to do so to prevent from wrinkles (so naturally she did the opposite)—when in question, but Jace made her sarcasm seem weak.

"Are you denying that I'm attractive?" Jace questioned, rolling on his side so that he could let his dizzying eyes settle on hers. The movement brought part of his chest to brush against her shoulder, and her breathing became uneven.

"If you choose to twist my words, then yes, I am saying that. I'm not denying anything—that would make me in denial over a clear fact, and I'm sure that not everyone finds you attractive." Clary tried to keep her face as plain as possible, and turned her face to look at him squarely.

The move was an awful one, and it brought her face inches away from his. His breath tickled her nose—it smelled of drinking water and something sweet—and felt hot against her face, but she wasn't uncomfortable. The only discomfort came from denying the strengthening urge to press her lips to his, an urge that was making it difficult to think.

"I don't believe that," Jace said, his voice low in his throat to make it into something even sexier than the usual nuances of his liquid voice were. "Are you also implying that you aren't attracted to me? If I 'twist your words', as you so delicately put it, it sounds like you aren't."

"Maybe I'm not." Clary breathed.

"Prove it," Jace said simply. Before she could ask how she was supposed to prove that she wasn't attracted to him, he sat up and winked at her. Jace then reached a muscled arm to the back of his neck to grab his shirt and pulled it over his head in a single swift movement. He tossed the shirt to the other side of the room and flashed Clary a dazzling smile, and she looked away with blistering cheeks.

"Problem, sweetheart?" Jace asked, and Clary kept her face down—she was just about ready to do anything but look at him. She felt a warm hand underneath her chin, and felt her face being gently pushed to Jace's direction. After a moment, he let his hand drop, and Clary let out a breath that she had not known she was holding. "Because if you aren't attracted to me, then you should have no reason to look away."

Clary had never been one to back out of a challenge, and she saw this as a sort of game to him. A twisted game, yes, but still a game. Her eyes wavered, but she tilted her head to look up at Jace, then let her eyes flicker downwards to the cuts and contours of his bare, lightly tanned chest.

The sight of the leanly muscled—and undeniably attractive—man was distracting at the least, but she was unable to help from glancing at the small scars that littered his chest. They were faint, but they stood out against his skin when focused on them—flashes of white against a tan canvas—and the struggle to fight off a blush strengthened.

"I suppose I wouldn't." Clary crossed her arms to reach for the base of her shirt and pulled it over her head, something she recognized as a bad move moments after she made the gesture. Her green eyes flashed over to her bright blue bra—too blue, something more girly than sexy in her eyes—and she brought her eyes back up to Jace.

Jace's golden eyes flickered over her in a dragging gesture—he was taking his time, and making sure to make her as uncomfortable as he possibly could—to increase the difficulty of the game on her part. She didn't mirror the action, and Jace grinned softly, "You know, Clarissa, I never said I wasn't attracted to you."

He began to kick his shoes off, his hands going for his zipper as to scare her into thinking he would fully disrobe himself, but he only received a moment of her surprised wide eyes before a dramatic voice cut into their strange exchange.

"I'm not sure you kids are aware, but in traditional methods of foreplay, you help each other remove your clothes instead of intensely staring at one another while you fling your clothing across the room."

The redheaded girl nearly screamed at the slightly familiar voice and grabbed the sheets of her bed to pull over her half-naked chest. She gave the tall Asian man standing in the doorway a confused look, and glared when she heard Jace's laughter from behind her. He, of course, made no move to retrieve his shirt from where he had flung it, but slowly made his way to where Clary's top was wadded up on the floor.

"Magnus Bane." Jace greeted, smiling at the man. Magnus looked down to Jace's chest, seeming to be only mildly interested with what he saw, and waved his hand as to dismiss the blonde man standing in front of him. Jace didn't seem fazed by the small denial, "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Just checking up on the little girl," Magnus said, and Clary frowned at the name. "Can you show me your arm?" Jace tossed the shirt to Clary, and she hastily clothed herself, not bothering to ask why Jace was making no effort to cover himself.

"Should I unwind this?" Clary asked, trying to ignore Jace's bare chest. The redheaded girl ignored the urge to fetch Jace's shirt and wring it around his neck, and looked up to see the Asian man nodding.

As Clary unwrapped the gauze, she attempted to ask why the Asian man was wearing glitter, but he seemed like the kind of man who would only provide a stupid answer to a stupid question. He didn't seem to notice the redhead watching the glitter that laced his eyes curiously, and twirled his finger to motion for her to unwrap the gauze more quickly.

"It's healing nicely. There doesn't seem to be any risks of infection, but you might need to get stitches on that in a week or so." Clary winced at the thought of a random doctor sewing her arm together, but Magnus didn't seem to notice her discomfort. "If you need a familiar face, you can drop by New York and have yours truly stitch you up."

"I'd hardly call you a familiar face." Jace remarked, and the Asian man ignored Jace completely. "When did you even get here? I didn't hear a doorbell. Who let your in?"

"Your pretty friend with the eyes." Magnus said with a catlike grin, and Jace had to restrain himself from pointing out that _everyone_ had eyes. "I called ahead to say that I was dropping by."

"Again, how? I didn't give you my number." Jace blew a tuft of golden hair out of his eyes, and Magnus onlt grinned coyly at him.

"That's another point to your friend—he gives his number out like candy." Jace didn't bother to mention that his best friend did not give his number out easily, but he was more interested in interrogating Alec later rather than questioning the extravagant man.

"So, is that all? You wasted a hundred bucks on gas just to come down and make Clary take her bandages off?" Jace asked, a blonde eyebrow raised.

"I'm not sure if you learned this in Police Academy, but doctors make more money than you obviously think. I could drive to visit Little Red in California, and the only thing I'd be wasting is time." Clary rolled her eyes at the nickname, not taking kindly to the fact that the two men would rather ignore the victim of the shooter—and the reason the flamboyant man was there in the first place—than pause their squabbling.

"I wasn't in _Police Academy_. I'm a trained agent for the FBI—I don't race around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to arrest a man who stole a watermelon from Costco." Jace replied, looking over to Clary for a moment as though she would back him up.

Clary took the opportunity to speak—she hated listening. "He doesn't chase watermelons. Watermelon thieves." Clary supplied, and Jace groaned at the awful attempt at her backing him off.

"Is that what the force does? Take the watermelons people steal, bash them over the heads with them, and send them to Alcatraz?" Magnus inquired, and Jace took a moment to wonder if Magnus was trying to tell a joke, or if he honestly believed that people were still sent to Alcatraz.

"People aren't still sent there, Magnus. And I have bigger problems to worry about—even bigger, shockingly, than the Watermelon Terrorists Of Costco." Jace said, and let his golden eyes flicker upwards to the camera in the room.

"Why do you have a camera in your bedroom? Are you trying to determine whether or not you succumb demonic possession in your sleep and walk around with a lighter?" Magnus asked, and Clary treated him with a strange look.

"Sad to say, but we aren't looking for demonic possession. It was placed by the bastard that tried to kill Clary, and it'll blow if we clip the wires. And unless you're an expert in nuclear weaponry, there isn't much productive work coming from this visit."

"So, does the man know that you two are dating? Or fake dating? Or does he know the whole shenanigan is fake?" Magnus asked, and Jace paused for a moment. The blonde boy finally walked over to where his shirt was hanging on Clary's lamp and twisted it in his hands, letting his eyes flicker to the camera.

"I suppose not. There's no audio, and the camera isn't good to detect what we're saying. For all he knows, Clary is mad for me, and dropped her life in New York to create a new, safer one here." Jace said, and Clary frowned.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you two have to play house in house." Magnus supplied, and he received strange looks from both of them, "Play a couple at home."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Clary asked, and Jace looked as though he was restraining laughter (most likely having something to do with her lack of experience in dating and fake-dating)

"Be adorable. Sleep together. Make everyone around us throw up." Jace supplied, and Clary's eyes widened. "The connotation of 'sleeping together' doesn't always mean sex. It could mean that we sleep in the same bed, or pretend to have sex in my room."

"Or we could take the bomb down and I could live happily in my own room without pretending that I constantly want to jump your bones. Why can't we be a fighting couple that always wakes the neighbors and doesn't need to be constantly dry humping each other?"

"I can give you five reasons." Jace said, holding up five fingers and beginning to count down, "We wouldn't want to live together. We wouldn't have moved in together in the first place. Make-up sex. Break-up sex. Angry-sex."

"Why are more than half of those reasons revolving around sex?" Clary asked, and Jace only shot her a white-toothed grin that made her feel unstable.

"Should I leave so that you two can continue your unorthodox foreplay?" Magnus inquired, and a blush quickly flamed Clary's cheeks. Jace nodded, and finally stopped twisting his shirt in his hands so that he could slip it over his head and lead Magnus out the door.

After a few minutes, Magnus was gone, and Clary was sitting in the kitchen with the three detectives. They were sitting on high chairs around the black marble island—much too fancy and useless for Clary's taste—and discussing Jace's 'ingenious' plan (or rather, ingenious to Jace, since he was the only one who thought it was 'ground breakingly marvelous'.)

"—glitter on your face." Clary heard Jace say, and she tuned in her attention—it was a rather random comment, but enough to tell Clary that they were through with talking about Jace's plan for a few moments. Clary let her green eyes wander to Alec, and he indeed had specks of sliver glitter scattering his neck and part of his cheek.

"What?" Alec asked dumbly, rubbing on his cheek (incidentally, the cheek that was free of the glitter). Clary took a closer look at the silver sparkles, something that looked like they had rubbed off on Alec rather than something that was directly applied. It made sense—though Clary didn't know Alec too well, she knew that he was not the type to apply glitter to his body.

"You have glitter on your face and neck—incidentally, the same kind the sparkly doctor was wearing. And your shirt is on backwards." Jace pointed out, something Clary hadn't noticed. She raised an eyebrow when she saw the nature of his clothing, coming to the conclusion that Jace had.

"He—he gave me a . . . makeover." Alec said quickly. Jace opened his mouth to say something more, but the blue-eyed man pushed his chair out and stood up swiftly. The movement would have been confident if not for the scattered look in his eyes, and he spared a last look at the people around the island. "There's bigger things to worry about than glitter. I'm going to do the camera."

Isabelle let out a short laugh at the frazzled man's phrasing, and even Clary had to hide a smile, "You do that bigger camera," Jace called out after his best friend, and Isabelle hit him in the arm.

"Don't be an ass, Jace," Isabelle chastised, but Jace only treated the girl with an even grin.

"I'm not being an asshole. Clary, am I being an asshole?" Jace asked, batting his gold eyes in an innocent way that made it difficult for Clary not to laugh.

"I think that Alec is right, Jace. The camera is a bigger thing to do—worry about." Clary corrected herself quickly, still thinking back to how disconcerted the usually calm detective was. Isabelle snorted, and Clary wondered if it was the first time she had made the female agent laugh.

"I suppose it is, Clary," Jace said, disappearing into the living room for a moment before returning with the strange note the man left—only this time, the note was in a plastic bag labeled 'evidence'. "And I think it's a big enough problem for us to take this to data analysis."

"Data analysis?" Clary asked, only vaguely recognizing the word from cop shows she remembered watching with Simon when nothing better was on TV.

"Analyzing the data. As in, testing this for fingerprints, and figuring out the identity of the attempted murderer." Jace said, and for once, there was no amusement in his voice.

;

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**Secondary Notes: **If that was too vague, yes, Magnus and Alec did hook up before he went up to bug Jace and Clary's shirtless session.

**important question:**

Should I write a shot about what exactly what happened with Magnus and Alec? I need to write something with the magnusalec pairing for the third month of gge, but I don't have very much planned yet. If you have a request or idea, leave it in the reviews c:

Question of the day:

**What was the last song you listened to?** I'm not too sure—it was either _Numb_ by Linkin Park, _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ by Nirvana, or _Teenagers_ by My Chemical Romance.

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